Anu Kirk

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  • Recognition

    May 23, 12

    
    

    I have spoken and written frequently about my involvement with the Duke University Talent Identification Program. I have written about the impact on my life, some of the instructors, and even a bit about my teaching experiences.
    

    
    

    This year, I was presented with the “Distinguished Alumni Award”, one of four honorees for 2012.

    
    

    One of the other honorees was perhaps my best friend at TIP, Douglas Arner. We've fallen out of touch over the last few decades, though last I checked he was happily married to a wonderful woman, and splitting his time between Hong Kong and London. Apparently he just had a child, and has written something like 11 books. (Doug, I really wish you had made it over!)

    
    

    The other two were strangers, but their accomplishments were impressive enough to impart a healthy dose of Post-cocious syndrome: One is literally working on a cure for cancer (and received news of achieving an important milestone the day of our ceremony). 

    
    

    The other works with notable inventor Dean Kamen helping create next-generation prosthetics and wheelchairs to help the disabled and combat veterans. And by “works with”, I mean he is apparently the #2 guy at the company

    
    

    Though I arrived very late on Saturday, May 20^th, I was still excited to be there. Waiting at the deserted airport for the rental car shuttle, I breathed in the cooling evening air. Here I was again. Despite the long, delay-filled day of travel and no dinner, I found myself cheerful and calm waiting for my rental car.

    
    

    My eyes blurry from travel, I managed to find my way from RDU to the Millennium Hotel, the same place I’d stayed almost exactly a year ago for the reunion. I parked and slowly carried my bags to the lobby, savoring the peaceful Spring night. 

    
    

    I caught the end of Saturday Night Live, marveling at Mick Jagger’s youthful energy while simultaneously thinking perhaps it was time for him to move on.

    
    

    At 10:30 am, I blinked awake to my phone ringing. Fumbling with it, I made plans to meet an old friend and fellow TIP participant for brunch. 

    
    

    Afterwards, we walked around East campus and caught up, talking about the past, and where our lives had gotten to in the present, and how we felt about all that. Throughout, I note how little East campus has changed in the nearly 30 years I’ve been going there. It’s a long enough cycle of time that some big old trees have died and been removed, and their young replacements have grown to similar or greater heights.

    
    

    That night, I have dinner with some of the TIP staff, including one wonderful woman who has now retired from the program. Dinner is outside, viewing the beautiful landscape. The food is tasty and the conversation lively, but I’m distracted by the birds flying by and the spectacular, luminous pink sunset.

    
    

    The day of the ceremony, I put on a suit and tie and try to look my best. I have a brief lunch with some of the program’s benefactors, staff, and parents of one of the honorees. Then it’s off to Duke’s basketball arena.

    
    

    The ceremony itself seems to fly by. There’s an introductory speech by TIP’s director, and then a longer keynote by an environmental scientist. They read Doug’s biography. He couldn’t be here today, between his teaching commitments and newborn child. 

    
    

    Then the next honoree. He stands and smiles politely as his biography is read. It sounds pretty impressive. He receives his award and sits back down.

    
    

    Then it is my turn. I stand up and smile, trying not to look too ridiculous. They read my bio. I have no idea if people even know what any of this stuff I do is.

    
    

    The next part is a really neat experience. TIP is more than just a residential summer program. It has a major “recognition” component.  7^th grade students who score higher than 90% of high school juniors on the SAT and ACT can take part in local events to recognize their achievements and talent.

    
    

    The top 3% of those students are invited to Duke for the “Grand Recognition Ceremony”. Me? I’m sitting on stage looking out at them. The smartest, brightest, most gifted 480 7^th graders in the USA.

    
    

    
    

    And then I get to put medals around each of their necks.

    
    

    One by one, their names are called. They come up on stage and walk across, and I and the other 2 present honorees take turns draping a medal on them.

    
    

    The variety is incredible. There are kids who look like they are already well into their teens, and some who look much younger. Some are tall. Some are short. I see boys and girls of every race, color, and creed. One young woman in full hijab. Some are dressed up perfectly. Some are in t-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops.

    
    

    I look every single one in the eye as they approach. I say “Congratulations”, and sometimes, if inspired, some other bit of wisdom or humor just for them. If I caught their name, I use it. I shake their hand.

    
    

    I try as hard as I can to convey how much I mean it. This is perhaps the first and last time anyone will ever celebrate them like this. To acknowledge they are different, and special, and that this is in fact, awesome.

    
    

    Most are awkward and shy. A few have the kind of self-confidence I still work to cultivate. A few are definitely…different. Most can’t help but smile a bit , which makes me very happy. One young man tells me “I’m a big fan of your work.”

    
    

    Meeting and honoring all these kids takes a while. It’s tiring, but it’s also fascinating. I feel lucky to have this experience. We finish the names, and the families begin heading back to their cars or airports.

    
    

    A few kids want their picture taken with me. “Did you really invent Rhapsody?” they ask. I explain that I was just one part of a great team, but that I did play an important role. They still think it’s cool. A bunch of families want photos with “the robotics guy”.

    
    

    They hustle me and the other honorees outside for a few more photos and an interview. I go last, and try to find a shaded bench in the sudden 84-degree heat.

    
    

    I catch a ride back to TIP HQ to collect my rental car. I say my goodbyes, remove my jacket, and climb into my giant Korean SUV. 

    
    

    I drive over to East campus. I’m too tired and hot to walk very far, but I do check it out again and think about how much I’ve learned on this small stretch of ground.

    
    

    These days, it’s hard for me to decide what had a greater impact – being a student or being a teacher. After all this time, I find I am still in both roles.

    
    

    Back at the hotel, I change out of my suit into jeans and a t-shirt. I clear my email and work for several hours, until room service comes.

    
    

    I put some music on. I look out the window and watch the trees ripple in the breeze until the night creeps in and erases them from view. 
  • Virtue and Virtuosity

    Mar 30, 12

    In the last 100 years, playing musical instruments with a degree of facility has fallen out of favor. Knowledge of how to play music was once considered part of a proper education, and part of how one was social. The invention of recorded music changed all that.
    
    In our time, instrumental virtuosity has been raised to a professional sport, like so many other things. There is either the "shredder" or virtuoso who is "the best", and then there's everybody else. The virtuoso is packaged and marketed and sold. The music is just product to validate the brand.
    
    Check this out. It's a wonderful video of someone covering "Rolling In The Deep" by Adele on the guzheng, which is a kind of Chinese zither (I used samples of a guzheng extensively on Reflection):
    
    
    That is virtuosity. They make it look and sound effortless, fun, and compelling. It's not gratuitously flashy (that stuttering pluck is one of the guzheng's idiomatic techniques). That's music. See also: Eddie Van Halen.
    
    Much modern music is content to focus on the false punk rock ethos of "we don't know how to play, we just fumble around". I have no problem with that. There are plenty of artists who worked chance or "naïve" techniques into their work. But most of those artists made good work, and they started from a place of deep understanding of art.
    
    I have a problem with those who somehow think not being trained or schooled or practiced somehow makes them more creative or better than those who are more studied.
    
    Another band I followed once said they had started out not knowing how to play, and that was fine for their first album. But over time they said they just turned into people who couldn't play very well, and they buckled down and learned about music, their instruments, and so forth.
    
    Nadia Boulanger famously said "To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them." She meant these things to be done in order.
    
    A bit of research, study, and practice goes a long way in any endeavor. It helps you accelerate to creativity, saving you the trouble of re-inventing many things. More importantly, it shows you ideas you may not have thought of and provides a framework.
    
    Practicing your craft, whether it is guzheng or fretless bass or drawing or making websites or baking pies is the best way to get better. You want to get good at something? Do it a lot!
    
    Don't fall into the trap of assuming you must either be an unschooled accidental genius or a complete virtuoso. The majority of the productive and creative world falls smack in the middle of those two extremes, and manages to create wonderful and compelling work.
    
    
    
  • Hum, Drum: SXSW 2012

    Mar 18, 12

    
    

    A bit of the line for MOG's party, as seen from the VIP area

    Clack…clack…clack

    
    

    Even all the way up here on the 13^th floor, the snare drums are clearly audible. They cut through the night and the mushy roar of a hundred bands and a quarter million people in the streets. They echo off the shiny glass faces of the buildings. I’ve heard enough snare drums pounding out rock rhythms to last a while. And enough guitars, too.

    
    

    It’s after midnight. I’m packing for my return trip. Everything is folded back into my luggage except tomorrow’s clothes, my dop kit, and the clothes I’m wearing. Spent books and magazines line the bottom of the bag, then gym clothes and shoes. 

    
    

    I slump into a chair for a moment, wondering how I will get to the airport on time tomorrow when everyone else is trying to do the same thing.

    
    

    I set the alarm for 4 am. Early bird catches the cab, I guess. I hope.

    
    

    Lights out. I slide into the hotel bed, blackout curtains closed. Even with foam earplugs in, I can still hear the snare drum tattoo, still feel the subsonic rumble of the kicks and bass playing. So many bands, so many people. So little actual listening.

    
    

    In the few minutes before my mind shuts down, it replays the events of my time at SXSW this year.

    
    

    The weather was pleasant. The constant threat of rain kept the skies overcast and brought the occasional refreshing breeze. All the places I had to go were walkable, which was good because driving was impossible. Streets were blocked off and/or choked with people, garbage, and music.

    
    

    The beat pauses for a moment, then comes back. This drummer’s not much for fills, I guess.

    
    

    I had some good meetings. I didn’t have to stand in too many lines. Best of all, I got to see a few friends I hadn’t seen in a while and had some great conversations. The work stuff was fun. But I’m exhausted and ready to go home. 

    The air itself seems tired of carrying vibration.

    
    

    I managed to eat reasonably healthy, going for as many green vegetables as I could and trying to avoid endless piles of salted meat and beer from plastic cups. I enjoyed the company at meals, though, whether it was friends or the New Yorker.

    
    

    I didn’t see much music, but it’s sort of like saying I didn’t see too much air. The music was everywhere, inescapable, seeping from every shadow into every pore. Countless bands banging away. I’m sure they were all great. Or all terrible. You can’t tell after a while, and even the most poignant, compelling, well-crafted stuff starts to sound ordinary or boring or like dismal hackery when your ears are full.

    
    

    Every other building had some band playing or setting up or tearing down. Bands were installed on buses and flatbed trucks, blasting their way up and down the streets. An endless parade of denim and t-shirts and telecasters and boots and beards and earnestness and 4/4 and riffage and ROCK and clack…clack…clack and this one’s called... and here’s a new one and Thank You SouthBy and come on people can you feel it. 

    
    

    I saw Bob Mould play. And The Roots. By all accounts, Mould was fantastic. I guess. He sounded great, competent, professional. But it’s like going to a great bakery after walking through Bakery Town, smelling baked goods and flour and butter and watching it all get made and watching people eat bread and brioche and donuts and cake and brownies while the entire time they're constantly talking to each other or their phones about how good the pastry they just ate was and which muffin are you going to eat next. 

    
    

    You sit down and know it’s going to be delicious, but so many aspects of your hunger have been sated that it’s hard to take even one bite. It's all too much.

    
    

    I was grateful to get in with my VIP access. Happier still to see some of my former colleagues, about to wrap up one stage of work and move on to another. I miss them.

    
    

    I think of the email piling up on my computer and wonder about getting to the airport in a few hours. The front desk told me all the shuttles were booked, and they couldn’t get cabs to answer the phone. They shrug and say “sorry!” in that pleasant “I’m so glad I’m not as fucked as you are” voice. No help, no service.

    
    

    I think of the friends I saw and the smiles and good conversation and real human connection. These are the things I treasure about travel.

    
    

    I plunge into a brief, deep, dark sleep.

    
    

    When I wake a few hours later at 4 am, the music has finally stopped.

    
    

    I pull myself out of bed, drenched in sweat. In the next 20 minutes, I shower and finish packing. I contact a cab company on the internet and summon a cab to the hotel. Adrenaline pushes me through the creeping nausea of too little sleep, early rising, and stress. It's good that I planned ahead, because my full brain is just not working yet. Early bird, I think.

    
    

    In the lobby, I hear the desk clerks laughing at how they can’t get transportation for any of their guests. I push through the glass doors, the straps of my bags grinding into my shoulder. 

    
    

    There’s a cab right in front of me at the curb.

    
    

    I slide into the back seat, my bags crawling off my shoulder. “Airport, please.” The driver nods and returns to his mumbled mobile phone conversation.

    
    

    The cab sharks through the now-deserted post-apocalyptic streets. Trash lines the gutters and covers the sidewalks. Plastic cups. Badge holders. Bags. Flyers. Paper.

    
    

    I roll down the window and let the dark, cool, pre-dawn air wash over my face. 

    
    

    The silence is beautiful.
  • A brief update

    Feb 18, 12

    Anu - "Reflection" (2010). Design by Iran Narges. Photography by James Carriere.

    When I first started this blog, I wasn't really sure what I was going to write about, or how frequently. Over the last few years, I seem to have settled in to a more-or-less weekly posting schedule on a variety of topics - digital media, current events, and the odd bit of personal news.
    
    Those personal events have been keeping me from my regular schedule. Aside from Skipper's death, I also started a new job at Sony Network Entertainment in January of this year.
    
    This job is perhaps the most challenging and exciting thing I have embarked on since the original Rhapsody. It's also been quite demanding - in the first 30 days, I have traveled almost every week, including a stint in London for the last 6 days.
    
    One side effect is that it is highly unlikely there will be an Anu album for the RPM project this year. I guarantee I am more disappointed about this than the 3 people who listen to my music are ;-) I hope to offset some of that disappointment by getting my last 2 records "Reflection" and "The Ghost Town" fully released.
    
    "Reflection", written and recorded in 2010, is available now as downloads from Google's Music Store. If you're not in the USA, contact me directly and I will tell you how you can get it.
    
    "The Ghost Town", written and recorded in 2011, is up next. And I'll be making all of my current catalog available across all major music services shortly.
    
    I also plan to return to a regular writing schedule. Thank you for your attention and support. Please stay in touch.
  • Skipper Greer (1945-2012)

    Jan 05, 12

    
    

    Skipper Greer, age 66, died Wednesday night January 4, 2012 at 10:50 pm Pacific, due to complications arising from brain surgery.

    
    

    Joe Kirk (L) and Skipper Greer (R) in Sienna, Italy, in 2011

    
    

    Skipper was born and raised in tiny Grandfield, Oklahoma. After attending Oklahoma State he moved to Los Angeles. He acted in films alongside talents like Raquel Welch. His love of the movie business and Hollywood glamour enabled him to segue effortlessly into behind-the-scenes roles, including working directly for a number of famous actors and a long stint at Disney.

    
    

    More importantly, he was charming, sweet, funny, sincere, and caring. The impact he had on my father's life is impossible to articulate. I am grateful for the chance to have known him.

    
    

    To remember and honor Skipper, my father has established a scholarship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology named the Skipper Greer and Joseph L. Kirk ('64) Scholarship Fund. 

    
    

    In lieu of flowers or other remembrances, you can make a tax-deductible contribution to the fund. Checks should be made out to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including a designation to deposit it into fund account #347-4500. 

    
    

    Mail the check and designation to:

    
    

    MIT

    Recording Secretary's Office

    600 Memorial Drive, Bldg W98-300

    Cambridge MA 02139

    
    

    All contributions will be matched by my father or me.
  • 2011's Music of Merit: Ambient

    Jan 02, 12

    I listen to a lot of quiet instrumental music these days. I call it ambient, because it's too dark and interesting for "new age". I started and ended most of my days in 2011 with one or more of these records, and worked and traveled to them as well.
    
    Tim Hecker "Ravedeath, 1972" and "Dropped Pianos"
    Masterful work from Mr. Hecker, who keeps sharpening and improving his palette. "Dropped Pianos" are the quiet piano demos for the massive, delicate album "Ravedeath, 1972", which is all pipe organs, processing, and pianos. A quiet album that sounds even better loud!
    
    Fennesz Sakamoto "Flumina"
    "Cendre", the previous collaboration between guitar processor Christian Fennesz and pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto, is currently in a "cooling-off period" because I overplayed it. This double CD will, for better or for worse, end up in the same place eventually!
    
    Beautiful pianos and electronics.
    
    
    

    Harold Budd "In The Mist"
    Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie "Bordeaux"
    Harold Budd, John Foxx, and Ruben Garcia "Nighthawks"
    Harold Budd, Robin Guthrie, and Eraldo Bernocci "Winter Garden"
    Harold Budd supposedly "retired" in 2004, but has produced more music since retirement than he did in the decades prior. It may be kinda samey, but it sure is nice.
    
    "In The Mist" is actually divided into 3 different sections. The first is reminiscent of his masterpiece collaborations with Brian Eno, but the rest of the disc is equally as strong in its own way.
    
    "Bordeaux" is a collaboration with guitarist Robin Guthrie in the vein of their previous works. It is distinguished by a brighter mood, slightly faster tempos, and a bit more melancholy than mystery.
    
    "Nighthawks" features John Foxx (who created one of my favorite rock albums this year) and Ruben Garcia with a series of piano pieces. Only available with Budd and Foxx's previous collaborations "Translucence" and "Drift Music" (previous favorites). "Sad piano music", as my friend Lauren would say.
    
    "Winter Garden" just came out, and it's lovely. A bit more modern and fresh than any of the others on the list. Complex and rich. My current favorite.
    
    
    Clive Wright "Deluge"
    

    Live electric guitar improvisation. But it's not wheedle-wheedle noodling, it's processed, pitch-shifted, looping, droning, soaring tones.
    
    The last track is called "The Return of the Sky Whales". Perfect.
  • 2011's Music of Merit

    Jan 01, 12

    Without much preamble, here are albums I found particularly notable in 2011.
    
    Album of the Year
    

    PJ Harvey "Let England Shake"
    (alternative rock)
    
    Without a doubt the best record of the year. A strong (but not strident) anti-war record. Beautiful songs and great production. Perhaps the only artist who articulated anything truly compelling and powerful this year.
    
    Lots of people don't like this record because it doesn't sound like "Dry" or Harvey's other earlier work. Me, I respect her more for being willing to stretch, reach, and change, and for trying not to repeat herself.
    
    It's also a record that holds up to repeated listening. It is not necessarily a record I want to put on every day, but I expect I'll be listening to it for many years. It avoids sounding contemporary in favor of sounding timeless.
    
    
    

    Gavin Friday "Catholic"
    (pop/adult contemporary)
    
    This is what pop for grown-ups should probably sound like. Many of the hipsters and "cool" listeners I know may point and laugh, but I thought this record was great.
    
    Friday has a rich, lovely voice and writes songs that are unabashedly "pop" with big choruses, clear sections, and strong beats, but they're also adult, complex and ambiguous in their meaning and emotion.
    
    You can hear the first single "Able" on Gavin Friday's website.
    
    
    

    Chancha Via Circuito "Rio Arriba"
    (electronic/cumbia)
    
    Sort of DJ Shadow for Argentinian music. Loops and electronics working with samples and/or acoustic instruments. One of the more unique things I've heard over the last few years.
    
    Not necessarily life-changing, but far cooler, more interesting, and more fun than many of the records you'll hear about on everyone else's lists.
    
    You can hear the whole album on SoundCloud.
    
    
    

    Little Dragon "Ritual Union"
    (electronic pop)
    
    When I first heard this record, I assumed it was a debut record from a few talented kids. It has a combination of hooks and weirdness that is usually lost in older artists as they learn how songs are "supposed" to go and records are "supposed" to sound.
    
    This record is just polished enough to be palatable, and is plenty catchy to boot. I probably won't be listening to this in a year or two, but I really enjoyed it this year.
    
    You can hear the whole album on SoundCloud.
    
    80s Revival
    

    John Foxx and The Maths "Interplay"
    (electronic)
    
    John Foxx was the original singer for Ultravox (He wrote "Hiroshima Mon Amour"), and his legendary solo album "Metamatic"inspired Gary Numan's early work. This year Foxx partnered up with Benge and his famous studio full of vintage synths.
    
    "Interplay" was the result, an album simultaneously futuristic and retro. The songs are strong, tight, and catchy, and the production is vintage electronica, all flanged chirping Roland drum boxes and buzzing, thrumming, swooping, and grinding synthesizers.
    
    Ultimately the record shows that it is possible to make something fresh, solid, and real with what most people would consider a dated palette.
    
    You can hear single "Evergreen" on SoundCloud.
    
    
    

    Ford and Lopatin "Channel Pressure"
    (electronic/indie)
    
    There were several albums by new or young groups this year that tried to either capitalize on "the 80s" or falsetto-based synth-funk from the 80s. Artists like John Maus and The Weeknd made watery, cargo cult records which failed to make any positive impression with me.
    
    Ford and Lopatin's "Channel Pressure", on the other hand, takes those elements and signifiers (parts were recorded at Jan Hammer's studio!) and does something great with them. Memorable songs and modern, glitchy production are interleaved with instrumental bits to create a Floydian whole.
    
    It took a few listens for me to understand it, but I appreciated the challenge and depth.
    
    You can hear single "Emergency Room" on their label's website.
    
    
    
    Old Sounds
    

    The Cars "Move Like This"
    (rock)
    
    It sounds just like old Cars albums. Many bands struggle to achieve a return to form and fail. Many more achieve it only to find it's an empty exercise.
    
    Given that, hearing The Cars (minus the late Ben Orr) do this so well was quite satisfying. Songs like the wistful "Soon" are easily as good as anything they've ever done.
    
    
    
    

    Thievery Corporation "Culture of Fear"
    (90s revival/downtempo)
    
    Remember the Golden Age of Trip-Hop, back in the late 90s? Thievery Corporation do. Their new album, "Culture of Fear", is a clear throwback to those days of yore. For better or for worse, this album would mix seamlessly with Morcheeba's "Who Can You Trust?", Massive Attack's "Protection", and Air's "Moon Safari".
    
    This record is an easy listen and is nothing new for Thievery Corporation, who were a part of the Golden Age of Trip-Hop and have been more or less doing the same thing for a dozen-plus years. It's still enjoyable, as long as you skip the title track, soured by Mr. Lif's tedious rapping.
    
    
    
    
    

    Mastodon "The Hunter"
    (metal)
    

    
    

    My appetite for metal continues to wane, aside from the occasional unimpeachable classic. This album fulfilled my quota this year.

    
    

    Mastodon is a great band, not just a great metal band. Their music is arty and powerful. This year, Mastodon made a U-turn from increasingly elaborate concept albums to make their version of a "concise pop" album.

    
    

    Despite the p-word, this record still growls, punches, and kicks like a bar fight. It sounds great and doesn't wear out its welcome. I will be listening to it again and again!

    
    

    You can read lyrics and hear this album at the band's website.
  • Jen Fitzgerald

    Dec 23, 11

    My friend and teaching partner Adam Tober told me that Jen Fitzgerald had passed away. 4 years ago today. She wasn't even 30.
    
    I'd fallen out of touch with her after teaching at TIP in 2006.
    
    You can read some details here and here, and you can hear some of her music on MySpace.
    
    What you really need to know is this: She was a sweet, funny woman who did a better job of teaching in the few hours she "guested" in my class than I did in the whole week. She was a talented and passionate composer. She kept me excited about teaching and music, and inspired me to keep writing and practicing.
    
    Miss you, Jen.
  • Echoes, echoes

    Dec 08, 11

    I'm on a Virgin America flight to Seattle. Self-upgraded to first class.
    

    Just like old times.

    I look out the window. I see a sprawling cloud landscape in blue and pink-yellow, stretching off to infinity. It's a whole different planet out there.
    
    I put my hand to the window and feel the cold seeping through the hull as we rocket over the cloud cover.
    
    As the plane turns and descends, the sun sets. Colors blossom. I see the moon appear suddenly over the pastel bands of the horizon. The cloud layers are translucent, and I marvel at the complex beauty that results from them sliding across each other. Seattle's lights gleam below.
    
    As we start our descent and drop through the white-out, I think of my good fortune at having seen such a thing. Truly wondrous and beautiful, a special moment.
    
    A woman calls my name. I turn to look at her and it is several seconds before I'm able to recognize a friend. We used to work together. Kindred spirits in many ways. She's got different hair now and new glasses. We are separated only by a few miles back in the Bay Area, but it's still been two years since we've seen each other. She's also on her way up to Seattle for the Rhapsody party. We share a cab and catch up on the way in.
    
    Of course, I'm staying at The Edgewater, as I did many times when working for Rhapsody. Many of our peers wonder why, preferring newer, flashier places. I'm still taken with its slightly faded Kubrick/David Lynch/Twin Peaks.com vibe. In the last 2 years, they've tarted it up a bit, but it's still funky and unique. Hanging on, literally and metaphorically. And so many memories.
    
    The old RealNetworks building is on the other side of the train tracks. Rhapsody's offices aren't there anymore, having moved to a hipper part of Seattle some time ago. But the party is walkable from here.
    
    I ride up in an elevator with 3 middle-aged professionals, talking to each other about their alcohol intake the night before and how it impaired their ability to participate in their management offsite meetings today.
    
    I find my room, change into gym clothes and hit the fitness center. I'm alone in there for most of my workout.
    

    Just like old times.

    A great remix I did of a friend's song comes up on my MP3 player. Their album never came out, but the track and the remix are good. It's a shame. They really could have been something if they got their act together.
    
    I clean up, eat some dinner, and roll out into the cold Seattle winter night.
    
    The last time I recall walking this way - in this kind of cold and dark - was many, many years ago, with a woman whose life has changed even more than mine has. Our paths crossed briefly but profoundly. I remember seagulls over the bay, their cries echoing off the buildings and water in the sun. She's not here in Seattle anymore.
    
    I wonder how she is doing, and I think of another woman I know who's moving to Seattle with her boyfriend in the next month.
    
    I pass many homeless people on First Avenue. I am reminded of my long walks through DC after high school winter evenings volunteering for The Jamestown Foundation. It must be hard to be homeless in Seattle.
    
    There's a line around the block to get in to the party, but I'm on the VIP list, so my line is shorter. I shuffle in next to a few former colleagues and watch as more arrive. There are lots of people here, most of whom I don't know. It's very crowded and loud.
    

    "So, what are you up to these days?" 

    I chat up the people I recognize. I'm surprised at who is there, and who isn't. Everybody seems very happy - there are new children and new relationships and new jobs. All the trouble and hassles of the past are forgotten, forgiven, set aside, or buried under very convincing smiles.
    

    "Are you still at MOG?" "How's MOG doing?"

    Bands play. Drinks get drunk. The food is demolished. Hours slip by.
    
    Look, there's the CEO, next to the billionaire. Look, there's my old boss. Hey, there's the guy who laid me off. There's the guy who replaced me. There's that guy I always passed in the hall.
    
    There's Peter Buck, guitar player for recently-disbanded REM. I tell him "Thanks for the music!" He smiles and nods and thanks me back.
    
    I look around. I am reminded of my high school reunions. It's time to go. Aches and pains and fatigue are creeping up on me. There's a lot going on in my life right now, a lot of things in motion. I push my way through the doors, out into the winter cold again. I say my last goodbyes to the smokers and stragglers out front.
    
    As I walk past all the closed storefronts, I think of doors opening and doors closing, separating inside from outside. People walk in, people walk out. You were here. Now you are there. This used to be the future. Now it is the past.
    
    A train rumbles past, horn blowing. The moon shines down, and its reflection shimmers in the bay.
    
    The seagulls' cries echo across the water.
    
    
  • Rhapsody, 10 years later

    Dec 06, 11

    The original Rhapsody 1.0 interface

    It's rare in life to have a good idea, the means to execute it, and actually manage to bring it to fruition.
    
    About 10 years ago, Listen.com launched Rhapsody 1.0.
    
    I was the product manager. One part of a team of talented, hard working people who brought it into being.
    
    The thing I remember best was the feeling of excitement - we were building something nobody had ever seen, and we were going to beat the competition, and we were going to beat the major labels and companies 10 times our size.
    
    And it was going to be amazing. And it was.
    
    Rhapsody created a new way to think about media consumption, more or less. For better or for worse, it's spawned a legion of imitators, copycats, and followers. So far, they all copy the Rhapsody template, and nearly every "new" feature they've brought out or added was something we had already thought of and had to put in the "do later" pile. Unfortunately, the other guys copied most of Rhapsody's mistakes, too.
    
    It's become fashionable recently to bash subscription services for "not paying enough" or something like that. Most are still struggling to get by. It's still a far cry from just a few years ago, when people were wondering whether or not it was a dumb idea.
    
    I've become a much better product manager and designer in the years since. I've worked at other companies, with other people. On bigger projects, smaller projects...you name it. I even worked at Rhapsody a second time as the General Manager of Product Management and made their first iPhone app.
    
    But nothing I've ever worked on felt as good as shipping Rhapsody 1.0.
    
    In retrospect, the best part has been the people - all the amazing people I've worked with and learned from over the last 10 years. Too many to name individually, but you all know who you are!
  • Protest

    Nov 20, 11

    The alarm goes off at 4:30 am. Today's going to be a long one.
    
    I silently slip into my gym clothes, grab my bag, and head off for my morning workout. The sky is black and the autumn chill makes me shiver.
    
    As I finish my workout with 30 minutes of cardio, the news is showing the Oakland Police forcibly removing the "Occupy Oakland" protestors. The news calls them "squatters".
    
    The scene is Orwellian: helmeted, armored, and gas-masked police in dark uniforms and jackboots kick down tents, drag people away, and eventually, start firing rubber bullets, "bean bag" shotgun rounds, tear gas cannisters, and flashbang grenades into the crowd.
    
    

    
    If the police were American soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan, using these tactics and this behavior  towards other soldiers, much less civilians, would result in courts-martial.
    
    The sounds, images, and storyline could be straight out of any number of video games.  It is surreal and disturbing.
    
    I watch the senseless violence and will later listen to the mayor talk about "protecting public safety". I wonder how protected the hospitalized protesters feel.
    
    Pop music from the Reagan era plays over the gym loudspeakers, plastic, oblivious, and upbeat. Everyone silently sweats, running on treadmills, watching the footage.
    
    I drive home in the dark, try to get cleaned up, and wolf down a quick breakfast before climbing back in the car. I have an early meeting with a very large tech company down south.
    
    I ease onto the freeway, past the traffic chokepoints, and am soon cruising down 280. I watch the sun slowly creep into the sky. A new baby blue Tesla roadster whips in and out of traffic, dodging the furry bags of roadkill littering the otherwise clean freeway.
    
    280 is a beautiful drive once you're past Serramonte, and as long as you don't have to do it every day. All you see are trees and fog and the sun and canyons. The wide, fast road seems to embody the California mythos. The morning's nightmarish science fiction dystopia seems far away.
    
    A few days later Oakland's mayor will deliver a statement, no doubt carefully crafted by Luntz-style language manipulators. I marvel at its clever, diabolical brilliance. She says all the real and peaceful protestors left a long time ago, and all that's left is the criminal element for Oakland to clean up.
    
    Shortly it will be revealed that 18 mayors of "occupied" cities had a conference call, planned, compared notes, and agreed to disperse the protestors (conveniently, while the President is out of the country). The mayors get their story straight. They lock out the media and other observers. They send in the riot cops, who mace women and kids in the face. Who beat people with truncheons. Who harass and assault bystanders.
    
    When this kind of crackdown happens in a single city overseas, there is government outrage and media support for the protestors. Think of the "Arab Spring". Now it's here in the USA, and it's happening nationwide. The crackdown is fierce and harsh, and the media is largely silent about the parallels, focusing on the sensational surface rather than the deeper drives.
    
    

    
    The mayors complain about how these protestors are costing the city money. The bitter irony is that we are all literally paying for this.
    
    There have been reports of horrific things (including beatings, robbery, and rape) happening in some of the camps. The police provide little investigation or help. They are implying (and sometimes stating outright) that it's what happens when you protest, while simultaneously using these incidents as justifications for the crackdown.
    
    
    This all sounds implausible, and yet every bit of it is true.
    
    
    I have mixed feelings about the "Occupy" movement. I have yet to discuss it with most of my friends.
    
    But it is easy to see why people would be upset. (If you read nothing else about the "Occupy" movement, take the time to page through that article. Maybe this, too.)
    
    And a few things seem very clear to me as I drive back home, the sky darkening fast at day's end:
    
    Whatever Occupy stands for and may have done, the reaction from the establishment - from the local mayors, from the banks, from the cops - is extremely telling. Occupy isn't setting cars on fire and smashing windows en masse (yet). They're marching and chanting and drumming and holding signs and...sitting there. But they've been subjected to a fierce crackdown. It's not clear exactly what Occupy's goals or demands are, but their existence is obviously terrifying the existing power structure.
    
    

    Scott Olsen, Iraq War veteran, shot in the head by OPD.

    Thus far, the Occupy people have been largely peaceful and non-violent, especially given the shockingly excessive police response. That won't last much longer. Young people with nothing to lose (and little grasp of consequences) won't take much more beating, spraying, and tasing before they start fighting back. Hard. First defensively, then pre-emptively.
    
    This will not end well. We all think of Kent State.
    
    When I look at the news footage, I see a small number of old, fat, clean people in suits behind the microphones defending the status quo, and many young, hungry, dirty people on the other side. Historically, in these types of conflicts, with those sides, the young, hungry, and dirty win. And when they do, there are lasting, violent, and painful repercussions for the old, fat, and clean.
    
    The dialog and trajectory of employment in America in 2011 feels like a return to feudalism. You have a very small number of extremely rich "job creators" (the lords) who claim they need to stay rich and privileged so they can "create jobs" for everyone else (the serfs). Nobody wants to admit they're a serf, and in America we believe we can rise up (through hard work or luck) to be a lord and have our own serfs, so why rock the boat?
    
    Since Occupy doesn't have simple, clear objectives, it's difficult for any negotiating to happen, especially at the municipal level. The Mayors have no power to force banks or Wall Street to change. It's difficult to see how Occupy itself can actually accomplish anything, other than serve as a very potent symbol of public unrest and increasing injustice. Because Occupy lacks a specific agenda, it risks losing control over its own narrative. Or worse, simply turning to violence and property destruction.
    
    I don't know that I understand or agree with everything Occupy stands for and does. I don't think they understand or agree, either. It's something of a Rorschach test for everyone.
    
    But when I see ordinary Americans harassed and physically assaulted by the police for exercising their right to free speech, or even for merely attempting to observe what is going on between the protestors and the police, it makes me angry and fearful for the future of our democracy. And if America can't make democracy work, what then? For us, and for the world?
    
    Somehow we ended up in a country where "corporations are people", "money is speech" and income inequality is quickly increasing. The result of combining those elements is as chilling as it is clear. If that is what our own government, police, and employers are protecting, it's time we all head down to the barricades.
    
    

    
    
  • Waits and Coldplay vs. Music Services

    Nov 08, 11

    Recently Tom Waits and Coldplay both released new albums.
    
    Tom Waits' "Bad As Me" is basically more of what you buy Tom Waits for. It's a great record if you like what he does. It's been getting stellar reviews.
    
    Coldplay's "Mylo Xyloto" is also basically more of what you buy Coldplay for. It's a great record if you like what they do. Arguably, it's been getting stellar reviews as well.
    
    Neither album was made available on the major streaming services (MOG, Rhapsody, RDIO, Spotify) in the United States.
    
    Both albums sold very well in their first week.
    
    Coldplay, of course, cleaned up. Their album "Mylo Xyloto" debuted at #1, with sales of 447,000. Coldplay is one of the most popular rock bands in the world. It's not surprising they debut at #1. What's surprising is how small the sales figures are, for what is one of the world's biggest bands, releasing a new album with a big promo push.
    
    Waits sold 63,000 copies and his album landed at #6. Yeah, it's only 1/7th of Coldplay's numbers. But look: Tom Waits, Top 10 artist. Something that would have been unthinkable back in the 20th century. "Bone Machine" (my favorite Waits record) was released in 1992 and peaked at 176 on the charts, and it even had a "single" with a great video.
    
    Make no mistake - Tom Waits hasn't gotten more commercial or watered down his sound, although "Bad As Me" is a more conventional record than some of his other work. His record is great. It's also not substantially better or worse than the last 5 he's released. I don't mean to diminish the genuine talent or artistry of Mr. Waits. I believe he's the real deal. He writes beautiful, perfect songs. I hear him coughing all night long, 100 floors above me in the tower of song.
    
    

    So why did he crack the top 10 this time, and not with "Bone Machine"?
    
    To paraphrase Norma Desmond, Waits didn't get big, the charts got small. It only takes 63,000 albums to debut at #6 now.
    
    A movie that only sold 63,000 tickets on opening weekend is considered a dismal failure, and at this point, that movie theater ticket costs more and provides less entertainment. Let's not even talk about what 63,000 viewers gets you on TV. 63,000 puts you in the realm of books.
    
    Some industry pundits are pointing to the Tom Waits and Coldplay sales numbers and are trying (incorrectly) to correlate those “strong” sales to Waits and Coldplay choosing not to make their new albums available on streaming services.
    
    This is not clear thinking. Both of these records were going to log strong sales no matter what.
    
    In Waits’ case, he’s got a very loyal group of fans and this is his first album of “new” music since 2004  (2006 if you count the b-ssortment "Orphans"). It got excellent advance reviews, not that it matters, since Waits' albums are more or less predictable, consistent, and critic-proof for his fans now.
    
    That said, Tom Waits has been hitting his audience-appropriate promo circuit hard. I heard him with Terry Gross on Fresh Air. I read an article about him in the New Yorker. I'm sure he'll turn up in a few other places, despite being somewhat reclusive by nature.
    
    As for Coldplay, they’re one of the most popular rock bands in the world. Of course their new album is going to sell well. It has been accompanied by the promo equivalent of a full-court press as well, including what is becoming the de rigeur appearance on the Colbert Report.
    
    Streaming, or lack thereof, had nothing to do with it. If "lack of streaming" played a part, it was only in the blogosphere lift that comes from people like me burning additional electrons on covering that part of the story.
    
    Put another way, there are 8 other albums in the top 10, all of which are available in streaming services and doing just fine.
    
    One could argue the story should be "Waits and Coldplay sell well despite absence from streaming services", but again, the same logic would apply.
    
    One wonders what kinds of sales these artists would have generated if they had made their music available on streaming services. Personally, I'm not buying either album until I've heard it first!
  • Music and Musicians in the 21st Century, a brief summary

    Dec 06, 11

    
    Here's what I think about music and musicians in the 21st century:
    

    
    

    If you are an artist or hobbyist (defined as someone who cares more about the specifics of what you're creating than getting paid), it is a better time to be alive than in all human history. You can make great recordings for cheap and distribute them globally with minimal effort. People are more interested in live performance than any time in the last few years, and willing to try new things. So there's a big potential audience and lower friction than any time I can recall.

    
    

    If you are someone who expects to earn a living from music, (and thus fundamentally cares more about getting paid than the specifics of what you're creating)

    ...the good news is it is easier to get started because there are all kinds of tools for creation, distribution, and feedback you can use that didn't exist even 5-10 years ago. 
    
    

    ...the bad news is that making a lot of money is probably more difficult than it has ever been, and you must think like a business person first and foremost. You are going to have to work. Being a great musician isn't enough - it's just table stakes, just like being a good chef is not enough to have a successful restaurant. 

    
    

    You have to either be a businessperson or surrender a portion of your revenue to one. (If you are not prepared to do that, I'd argue you're a hobbyist/artist.)

    
    

    Artist/Hobbyist or Careerist, in either case, there's far more music out there now than the audience can take in. 

    
    

    You'll be competing against not just the 200,000+ albums that will be released this year, you'll be competing against the 200,000 that came out last year. And against Lady Gaga's album. And Britney and Nirvana and Duran Duran and Led Zeppelin and The Beatles and Eddy Cochran and...people who think whatever they did with the "T-Pain" app is a "real song".
    
    And when I say "compete", I mean that you are highly unlikely to even make minimum wage as a full-time musician:
    

    • In 2009, there were 98,000 new albums released (Soundscan, does not include Tunecore-style digital only releases)
    • Only 2% of those 98,000 releases sold more than 5,000 copies over the entire year.
    • Only 1% of those 98,000 releases sold more than 10,000 copies over the entire year.

    In the late 90s, the average band on a major label, with a national promotional push, sold about 1,000 copies of their album.
    
    This is the price of democracy - everyone can contribute, everyone has a voice, everyone is competing. 

    
    

    Musicians shouldn't expect an audience to find them, and shouldn't expect any individual or company to wave a magic wand and solve their problems for them.
    
    This is good advice for anyone in any industry, and is certainly how my own career (in every part of the music business) has been.

    
    

    Really, musicians are like any other person in the 21st century:
    
    
    You can't coast along doing whatever worked last year or last decade or last generation and expect success or even survival. It is a cutthroat, competitive world out there. 

    
    If you run a business (say, a restaurant or a digital music service) and it fails, mostly people will say "You probably did it wrong. You probably weren't good enough. You made mistakes." Complaints about how rough the industry is and how people won't pay for quality will fall on deaf ears.
    
    Is the music business any different?
  • In the Rolling Stone

    Oct 25, 11

    I have achieved a lifelong goal: I'm finally in Rolling Stone magazine.
    
    Appropriately enough, it's in an article about technology, music, and economics - my life in 3 words I guess.
    
    This quote refers to the talk I gave a few weeks ago, and the number in question refers to the "PurePlay" rates. These are what most large "radio-only" webcasters play. Pandora may be paying out something slightly different given their size, but for the purposes of the presentation I gave, it was close enough!
  • The Reaction to "Making Cents"

    Oct 11, 11

    Last Friday, I was in Los Angeles to participate in Digital Music Forum West. I gave a presentation adapted from some of my writings about subscription service payments to artists called "Making Cents".
    
    I wanted to get people thinking, and I accomplished my goal. I've been to too many of these conferences (including this past one) stuffed with uninformative, shilly, boring presentations from dull speakers, or discussions that meandered from stock topic to stock topic, or worse, were empty of any controversy ("Music is great! Who agrees?").
    
    This morning, Dave Allen made a nice, inflammatory tweet:
    

    At least @Mog 's @AnuKirk is honest about paying musicians pennies but spreads the blame. #BadDefense bit.ly/px9poK

    ...derived from his reading of this article about my talk.
    
    Well, actually, I was talking about fractions of pennies! I'm not happy about Dave characterizing my talk as a "bad defense". That's not at all what my talk was about or intended to be. I didn't see Dave at the show, but maybe he saw the talk on the web.
    
    The Fast Company article isn't exactly accurate either. I wasn't interviewed for it, and didn't have a chance to talk to writer Austin Carr. It also leaves out some very important points I made.
    
    You can guess what buttons the author wants to push - there's a big photo of a nice hip band (upright bass! banjo! washboard!...it's even called "610-working-band.jpg") with all the right signifiers (bike in the background! recycling bins!)
    
    

    Photo of anonymous "working band" by Flickr user jonathanpercy

    Recently a number of articles have come criticizing subscription services for how little they pay artists for plays. (This is after years of articles questioning when or if subscription services will ever be viable).
    
    As I said repeatedly in my talk, these small amounts don't seem fair. So what is fair?
    
    I could summarize my rather brief talk as follows:
    
    

    • Determining "what's fair" to pay artists for a single play is complex. It involves the artist, the service provider, and the audience. Presumably "fair" means all of these folks get something out of the transaction: the artist gets some cash or other benefit, the service provider is able to survive, and the audience/fan/listener has a service they're willing to pay for.
    • Artists traditionally have accepted a wide range of payments for their music, including very small amounts, zero, and even negative dollars (artists have paid FM radio or other outlets to play their music). Hell, the band in the photo is effectively playing for free, and the author didn't even tell us who they were!...though he did tell you who took the photo: Flickr user Jonathan Percy (who doesn't identify them either)
    • If rates are too high, businesses cannot survive.
    • The audience's willingness to pay for a single play is highly variable. Pro tip: They don't want to pay a lot.
    • There's often a mismatch between what artists think their music is worth and what business and the audience think it is worth
    • The "real problem" is how we get more people to listen to more music, and value it more.

    Take a good look at that photo again. You see the band playing. You don't see an audience. If you look to the right, you'll see a bunch of people. With their backs to the band, looking elsewhere. This is what I'm talking about. This is the problem.
    

    
    

    Now, addressing some specific points in the Fast Company article:
    
    

    • I did not create the estimate of "$0.04 per album play" - I specifically attributed that to its original source, Uniform Motion's article on HypeBot. (The SiriusXM and Pandora numbers are approximations from publicly available data).
    • I did not imply that payments to artists could get worse. I noted that many of the businesses paying higher rates had folded or were struggling. It's certainly possible. They could also get better.
    • I know services pay labels, not artists. I started with a disclaimer that I would be simplifying terminology and models due to the limited time, but that the gist and magnitude were accurate.
    • There is no "per-play rate" for many subscription services. They operate like performing rights organizations, collecting a pool of money and disbursing it to "members". The amount paid "per play" varies depending on factors like the number of subscribers, the number of plays, and the number of participating labels

    
    
    I strive to create compelling presentations. I am not a bomb-thrower, however. It's easy to shock and provoke, harder to really talk about issues in a serious way. So note some other points I made:
    
    

    • Most subscription services pay labels/artists even if users play nothing in a given month
    • Performers get paid nothing for plays on FM radio
    • Selling CDs is hard - it's far more difficult to convince people to pay $10 for a CD than it is to get them to click a play button on a service they've already paid for
    • According to Soundscan, in 2009, there were 98,000 CDs released (double or triple that if you include digital-only releases)
      
      Of those 98,000, only 2.1% sold more than 5,000 copies for the entire year. 1% sold more than 10,000.
      
      According to the "Information Is Beautiful" chart I referenced, a solo performer on a label needs to sell 1,161 CDs per month to earn the equivalent of minimum wage. 13,932 CDs for the year.
      
      So by that math, even in the "selling CDs" world, very few artists on labels are earning minimum wage. 
    • Being totally independent makes it a little easier: 1,716 CDs per year. But that means the independent artist is doing all the work.

    
    
    Ultimately I said the same things I've been saying for years: The music business is tough for everyone. 
  • The Wreck of Hewlett-Packard

    Oct 02, 11

    An early Hewlett-Packard Oscillator

    Hewlett-Packard is sort of The Rolling Stones of Silicon Valley.
    
    The early HP was a groundbreaking, innovative company that didn't just kick out great products, they helped create and validate a whole new way of doing business.
    
    They were the original "garage-based start-up", a scrappy pair of guys who had some incredible hits in the early days. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard had impeccable tech cred. They were also smart people who studied under Frederick Terman (whose father, Louis Terman, is a pioneer in gifted education).
    
    They espoused The "HP Way", a noble and empowering mindset which many successful Silicon Valley companies still emulate.
    
    But much like the Stones, middle- and old-age haven't been kind to HP, and they've never been the same since the founding members left.
    
    The company went from cranking out its own innovative products to slapping a brand on mediocre-at-best Windows boxes. It has made some incredibly bad decisions over the last few years, and despite (or perhaps due to) being enormously large and recognized, HP seems locked into a long-term death spiral.
    
    I heard today from one analyst "the company is just too big for any one person to comprehend". Yet there are other big companies that are more successful and still comprehensible.
    
    HP used to be awesome. What happened?
    
    Partying in 1999
    HP was founded in 1935. It went public in 1957, after a long slow climb. Its early decades were somewhat unfocused, but the company managed to bang out enough success to keep going.
    
    It missed a few great opportunities (Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I while at HP, offered it to them, and they passed), but by the mid-80s was going strong. They did manage to get on the internet very early (1986!).
    
    The 1990s marked a big shift for HP, as they moved into consumer markets, instead of just professional tools and devices. This culminated in 1999.
    
    1999 was a big year for HP. They spun off all of their tech businesses not directly related to computers, storage, and imaging. That spin-off (Agilent) was the largest IPO in Silicon Valley history.
    
    They also appointed Carly Fiorina as CEO. Carly Fiorina was the first woman to lead a Fortune 20 company. Her most notable achievement at HP was the acquisition of Compaq, which helped establish HP as the largest shipper of personal computers - most of them being middling Windows boxes.
    
    She was quite controversial and not very popular at HP, and eventually shoved out the door with a $20 million severance package. The stock price dropped 50% during her tenure, though much of that was arguably due to overall market conditions and not her leadership. Regardless, she's been called one of the worst CEOs of all time by Conde Nast Portfolio (whoever they are).
    
    Making a Small Fortune on WebOS (out of a large one)
    Once upon a time, there was a company called Palm Computing. They created something called the Palm Pilot, which was a pretty kick-ass little "personal digital assistant", or PDA. It was stylus-based and an excellent combination of (then) state-of-the-art technology and solid product design. It did what it was supposed to, reliably, and quickly displaced the paper Fil-o-fax as the weapon of choice for biz people.
    
    It was a big hit. But like many companies (and bands), after the first big flush of success, Palm sort of lost their way and became complacent. They stopped worrying, even as other devices came after them aggressively.
    
    In a few short years, Palm was the worst-performing PDA manufacturer on NASDAQ, despite having revitalized the category. Their stock lost 90% of its value in a single year. Many corporate shenanigans ensued, but the end result was a "new" Palm dedicated to building a new OS and new devices to compete with the now-dominant Blackberry and iPhone in the smartphone market.
    
    The new thing would be called WebOS. The OS was highly thought-of, even if the hardware it was initially presented in was lacking.
    
    But good reviews alone don't matter. A little over a year after WebOS launched, the struggling Palm sold to HP for over a billion dollars.
    
    And then, in a single phone call, HP destroyed much of the value of the ecosystem. Once then-CEO Mark Hurd said HP "didn't buy Palm to be in the smartphone business", pretty much every independent developer working on the platform threw in the towel.
    
    Without 3rd-party apps, platforms don't make sense for users, especially as Apple developers kept cranking out hit after hit.
    
    Less than a year after the sale, HP backed out of offering OS updates to devices in the field and then turned around and announced a bunch of new devices.
    
    6 months later, HP would announce they'd be selling their consumer devices group, and not shipping any new devices for users.
    
    The Unstoppable TouchPad Crash-and-Burn
    Despite having irreparably damaged tech faith in WebOS, HP announced the TouchPad: their "tablet" computer based around the now-irrelevant and unsupported WebOS. You may have heard how that turned out: The company launched it on July 1, 2011 and 7 weeks later, on August 18, 2011, announced they were going to discontinue it and all WebOS devices.
    
    This was only 5 weeks after launching in the UK and other Euro countries, and only 3 days after launching in Australia.
    
    They started blowing the inventory out at $100 (for a device that had been priced at $500 and which, by most estimates, cost over $300 to build, not including the costs of developing and designing).
    
    Even after the company canceled the product, I kept seeing lavish TV ads appearing everywhere I went. Apparently the marketing juggernaut was unstoppable, even after the head had been cut off.
    
    But it gets better.
    
    Not even 2 weeks after announcing they were killing all WebOS products, HP announced it would do another production run of the TouchPad. This might be a way for HP to mend relationships with component vendors, but it sure looks like a poor business move.
    
    Rotten at the Top
    Mark Hurd was CEO for 5 years. He resigned in 2010, not because he had totally blown up WebOS or mismanaged the company. He resigned because "expense account irregularities" were uncovered and sexual harassment alleged.
    
    Of course, a company's culture comes from the top. That doesn't just mean senior management - that also means the board of directors. If the board is wise, they choose good management and provide appropriate feedback, controls and guidelines. If the board is foolish, they let management run unsupervised, or micro-manage product details based on their own preferences and whims.
    
    The behavior of HP's board of late is appalling. Not that long ago, HP's board engaged in activity that was not just immoral and unethical, but illegal. That should have been enough to clean house.
    
    But the culture was set. A new HP way, I suppose. That culture is ultimately responsible for the wreck that HP's become. To give you an idea of how that negligent culture manifests, HP's board didn't even bother to interview the CEO they hired a year ago and then dismissed.
    
    Now, the board is supposedly considering Meg Whitman as the new CEO. One hopes they'll actually talk to her this time.
    
    Bad Products
    My own experience with HP shows what happens when marketing passes innovation:
    
    In the late 90s, I needed a fax machine, scanner, and laser printer for my recording studio and record label businesses. I went to my local Fry's electronics and purchased a multi-function HP device. It did everything I needed, it was compact, and it carried the HP brand. And it was the right price - about $400 if I remember correctly. A tiny bit more than I wanted to pay, but it seemed like a substantial investment.
    
    Took it home, installed it. Worked great.
    
    For about a year.
    
    Then it stopped properly feeding paper through, either to scan or print. The roller just slid over the paper. I started trying to track down issues on HP's disaster of a website. It became clear many other users were having the same problem. HP's response was to shrug and say it wasn't built to last.
    
    There was a class-action lawsuit. HP agreed to ship out a "fix kit" to all users who jumped through hurdles. I jumped through the hurdles. I got my fix kit. I carefully, properly installed it. It sort of worked, though not reliably. Still better than junking the thing.
    
    About 2 years after that, Microsoft released Windows XP, a big step up from Windows 95, 98, and 2000. I upgraded. My HP device no longer worked. Back to the website.
    
    Turns out you had to BUY a driver disc from them for about $20 in order to get XP drivers. So I bought it (since I couldn't find the drivers online anywhere). I used that device for a few more months until the toner cartridge ran out. HP charges a lot for toner and doesn't want any competition in that market.
    
    I was happy to be rid of the device, and I vowed I'd never again purchase anything from HP.
    
    Conclusion?
    What can you say? HP is huge and profitable, for now. Companies that big achieve a kind of failure-proof critical mass. They'll be around for a long time barring complete catastrophe, but it's hard to see them ever innovating again, or ever having hits again. They're just another big, dumb, slow company.
    
    There's worse things for a garage start-up to end up as. There's better, too.
    
    
  • Uniform Motion, Subscriptions, and Lady Gaga

    Sep 16, 11

    The band Uniform Motion has attracted some attention in digital media circles over the last couple of days by posting a list of how much they're getting paid by various digital sources.
    
    The message seems to be "Spotify is bad for artists"...and by extension, so are other subscription services like Rhapsody and MOG.
    
    But like the last time this argument was made, this is an unfair comparison, presented with an incomplete analysis.
    
    So let's look at a few points:
    
    1. It's far easier to get someone on a subscription service to listen to your album than it is to convince someone not on a service to buy your album.
    
    Subscribing fans have already paid their subscription fee, so trying something new costs them nothing but their time and attention.
    
    On the other hand, getting people to buy music without having heard it first is extremely difficult. This difference in effort/risk is partially why the pricing or payment structures are different between downloads, CDs, and streams. (It also has to do with "just listening" as opposed to "getting a copy").
    
    2. Subscribers still buy music, and they buy more than non-subscribers!
    
    Subscription listening and purchasing aren't mutually exclusive. Research shows that subscription users tend to buy more music than non-subscribers. Individual subscribers frequently talk about how they use services to decide what to buy.
    
    3. What's a "fair" per play rate?
    
    Let's assume the quoted "Spotify rate" is too low. So what should it be? What's a fair price to play a song once? The 25 to 50 cents a jukebox charges? A penny? What's fair to the artist and to the fan?
    
    One of the bits of data that guided my thinking when developing Rhapsody was a NARM statistic:
    

    The average CD is listened to fewer than 10 times after purchase.

    
    So taking that, let's look at a single track. You can buy it on iTunes for $1. So let's say you'll play it 10 times. How about 10 cents for a single play?
    
    Well, Lala.com had that model, charging users 10 cents to "buy a stream" (which actually gave you infinite plays for 10 cents), and they went out of business and sold themselves to Apple for peanuts because they couldn't make a profitable business at those rates. So charging the fans 10 cents (and paying the artist less than that) wasn't workable, at least for Lala.
    
    Sirius XM satellite radio pays about $0.002 (1/5th of a cent!) per play. Pandora pays about $0.001 (a tenth of a cent). Other Internet radio stations pay similar, or even lower rates. Both Sirius XM and Pandora had to spend substantial sums and took a long time (nearly a decade) to get to massive scale, and even now they're both just scraping by. So it would seem either all those radio stations are badly managed businesses, or those rates are still on the high side.
    
    If you get played on terrestrial/broadcast radio, you get nothing unless you wrote the song, and then it depends on whether or not your PRO was sampling that particular station, and how the arcane math of the PROs happens to shake out that distribution period. Broadcast radio has been a strong business for a long time, but its listenership has eroded and now the sound recording owners (artists and labels) are starting to think they should get paid.
    
    But at a payment rate of "nearly nothing", not only was FM radio a successful business, artists and labels would literally break federal law repeatedly to pay radio to play their songs. (I will note here briefly that "payola" laws do not apply to internet businesses, and I have speculated in the past that it is possible artists and labels would pay Pandora or other services to slip their music into programming it wouldn't otherwise be in. This may already be going on!)
    
    So my takeaway is a realistic rate for businesses to pay today is somewhere between zero and $0.002 per play, and potentially the artist should be paying the business for exposure. In that light, Spotify's rates don't seem unreasonable.
    
    Of course, it also goes without saying that piracy - what people will turn to if there are either no alternatives or only alternatives they think are unreasonable - pays the artist nothing.
    
    4. Music has different values to different people, or even the same people at different times.
    
    If you're a fan of Coldplay, you might pay $50 to be the first person to hear their new song.
    
    If you're not a fan of Coldplay, you might have to BE paid $50 to listen to it. And Coldplay might be willing to pay you to try it to see if you like it.
    
    If you've heard the song hundreds of times, you might want to value it less than the first time you've heard it.
    
    Or maybe you didn't care for it the first time you heard it, but now, after 10 plays, it's started to click with you.
    
    Or it reminds you of college, and the added nostalgia makes it valuable.
    
    The song remains the same. Should the pricing? Plenty of other businesses charge different prices for the same product to maximize profits (it's called price discrimination).
    
    It's Up To The Artist To Decide
    
    Ultimately, every artist looking to distribute their art has to decide if what they're getting paid for it makes sense to them.
    
    Some bands will play night after night for little more than 2 cheap beer, $20, 4 guest list slots, and the hope they'll make a few fans. Some don't tour at all. Some only do it if there are minimum guarantees.
    
    Some, like the aforementioned Uniform Motion, even let people set their own prices to own the band's music, including ZERO DOLLARS. If Uniform Motion is willing to give their own music away for nothing, does it seem reasonable for them to complain about how "bad" Spotify is for paying them so little? At least Spotify is paying them something, and providing accounting.
    
    Uniform Motion admits they produced more physical product (250 units) than they believe they can sell. They don't expect to break even, but so far, they're also not planning on dropping the price to move the inventory. This is their third album, so they've manage to get this far somehow.
    
    Even looking at how Uniform Motion values their own music, one walks away confused. The band themselves seems to think their music is worth something between zero and 15 Euros. The pricing seems to be largely determined by the packaging it comes in, rather than any intrinsic value in the product itself. (I will also note I haven't purchased or heard any of their music, so I can't comment on the quality of the packaging or the art).
    
    Ultimately, the pricing isn't the issue. The issue is a disconnect between what the artist thinks their work is worth and what the audience thinks it is worth.
    
    Lady Gaga "sold" her new album on Amazon for $1. What does that say?
  • 9/11/01-11

    Sep 11, 11

    I'm a bit uncomfortable joining the ranks of people and organizations "looking back over the 9/11 decade", because it's an extremely depressing exercise. As practiced by most, it's also excessively sweetened and adulterated with an insincere and shallow analysis of how the USA has reacted, and what it's all meant.
    
    Where Was I?
    I had been working late. Very late. Rhapsody was racing towards its initial launch. My small team (myself, another product manager, a developer, and a designer) were working hard to complete an HTML-powered demo of Rhapsody for a presentation to the Listen.com board of directors. We'd been working late all week, and on September 10, 2001, we worked until about 3 AM.
    
    As I rode my motorcycle home, I thought about how long it had been since I'd stayed up that late working, and I wondered how I would function the next day. I got home, slept until 7 am, and then stumbled into the shower. As I was getting dressed, I checked my e-mail. This was before RSS feeds, so I had set up CNN to e-mail me about any notable events.
    
    One email headline said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I figured it had to be a hack, a joke, or spam. Then, scrolling up, I saw a message about another plane. And another about the Pentagon. I turned on the TV as I finished getting dressed. I watched the news for about 20 minutes, seeing the footage of the crashes and the shock of the anchors.
    
    I left for work.
    
    At the office, people were mostly standing around in shock. One of my coworkers came in the front door, saw everyone milling around, and asked me what was going on. I said "someone has crashed jets into both towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." He laughed. I said "no, really. I'm serious. This is bad." He took off for the TV room.
    
    I sat down at my desk and started working.
    
    Around 10 or 11 am, the CEO gathered the company together and told everyone to go home and be with their families. Except me and my team. We were supposed to keep working to finish our demo.
    
    At lunchtime I walked several blocks, trying to find a place open to get food, watching the empty skies for planes. I was listening to the quieter pieces on "Drukqs" by Aphex Twin, and that album continues to summon a kind of desolate, fatigued, melancholy when I hear it.
    
    We kept working. Around 7 or 8 pm my girlfriend called me. She was upset and wanted me to come home. I told her I had to finish up and I would be a few more hours. I'll never forget how scared and alone she sounded, and how bad I felt when I hung up the phone. I left about 3 hours later, told the team to knock off for the day.
    
    We finished the demo the next day, and of course found out the board meeting had been cancelled since no planes were flying.
    
    While at work during those next few months, however, I'd spend a lot of time thinking about what had happened. I was moved to tears several times - watching the footage, looking at photos of the reactions from around the world, and hearing various stories of the survivors, the people around the world. I was fortunate in that I did not have any direct connection with anyone killed in the attacks - surprising given how many people I know in both DC and New York.
    
    

    History and The Gulf War
    My family has a strong connection to the United States military and government. My paternal grandfather fought in many wars for the USA and devoted his life to advanced military technology for its benefit. My father worked for intelligence agencies, helped stabilize the nation's faltering economy in the 70s, and worked to clean up many of the USA's most toxic sites in the 80s. My maternal grandfather worked to supply military bases around Europe.
    
    I remember turning 18 and driving myself to the post office to register for the draft. . The woman behind the counter accepted my card, checked it over, and said "Hey, happy birthday!" I understood that part of the price of living in the USA was being prepared for military service.
    
    I wasn't happy about it, but I naively felt the world (at least the USA) existed in a time beyond full-on war. But when I was attending college in 1990, President Bush attacked Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Operation Desert Storm, or The (Persian) Gulf War (I).
    
    My fellow students and I were worried. We understood that "this aggression cannot stand", but there was a lot of debate about whether the USA (as opposed to the UN) was obligated to do something, or whether or not it was even worth doing anything. The USA was not in direct jeopardy, and Kuwait was hardly a top-tier ally.
    
    The liberal professors were aghast. I was taking a video class at the time and the instructor was really upset about the US invasion, and the possibility of war. He had us write essays about it, and the possibility of us going off to Iraq to fight.
    
    I remember this well because I felt it was somewhat inappropriate (this was a class on "creative video", after all), but I found myself moved by thinking through everything this meant. I wrote something to the effect of "I don't want to go to war, I don't want to kill people, especially under circumstances where our country is not in direct jeopardy...but it's part of the price of being a citizen. If I don't like it, I need to stand up and tell our 'leaders' and end the war. Not because I'm afraid of killing or dying, but because war is irresponsible and stupid."
    
    I recall my peers saying "it's going to be Vietnam in the desert - the resistance will be dug in, and we'll be there for years. We won't win. "Victory" is impossible in those conditions."
    
    Miraculously, though, the Gulf War was short and contained, and none of that happened. My peers and I figuratively and literally dodged a bullet.
    
    

    After 9/11
    The USA's societal and political responses to 9/11 have been depressing and frightening.
    
    When I was in grade school, I read "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" by Mark Twain. I thought of that story repeatedly over the next few years as the USA, which had long prided itself on being tough, stoic, and fair, became frightened, emotional, and paranoid.
    
    The passing of the PATRIOT act was unreal. The ensuing curtailing of civil liberties was made worse by the general attitude of "if you don't go along with this, you're supporting 'them'". What little we do know of what the government and private industry have done is positively Orwellian and chilling.
    
    Hearing government officials actually say "watch what you say" was creepy. Hearing them suggest people be rounded up pre-emptively or put into internment camps was infuriating. But watching the rest of the country go along with all of it (either reluctantly or worse, with chest-thumping vigor) was heartbreaking.
    
    I didn't want to go to war. I don't know anyone who did. People marched in the streets, wrote angry letters. Blogged. Called. I became more politically active than I have ever been in my life. It didn't do any good. Our leaders threw us into not one, but two wars. Changing Presidents and parties hasn't helped. The wars continue. Gitmo is still open.
    
    I could write extensively about the minor inconveniences and idiocies we've imposed upon ourselves in airports, but they're ultimately insignificant. They're annoying and ineffective, but the net result has been making sure I have an extra hour at the airport instead of an extra 15-30 minutes.
    
    What I've really noticed at all those airports is the soldiers. They're everywhere I go. And so very many of them are kids. 18 year-olds. They're not in a fancy college. They're going to, or coming from, the countries we're occupying. They will probably endure longer service and more tours of duty than any prior generation of soldiers.
    
    I look at these...children, and my heart breaks. I want to approach them and say many things. I want to thank them for their service, and apologize for not being able to prevent them from having to endure it.
    
    In the past, the hardship of war was shared and helped create a bond and common cause. That's no longer true in the USA of the 21st century. The Selective Service System hasn't been used to draft people. The country has chosen to deploy the National Guard. Instead of sharing the burden, we've extended the obligations of our "volunteer army" while denying them equipment, decent care, and benefits.
    
    In the 21st century, the press is locked down and co-opted. The news media barely even reports on the wars, and the public is barely interested. If I were a reporter covering the White House, I'd ask every damn day "when will the USA leave Iraq and/or Afghanistan?" Instead, the reporters ask dozens of questions about the President rescheduling a speech on jobs. Neither party will take a stand.
    
    There's no "TV war", like Vietnam, on the news every night. It would hurt ratings. There's some great reporting going on outside of the evening news, but nobody's watching it. If it is put in front of you, it's so outrageous and sad, it's hard to not just shove it out of your mind. People compile their own news sources, and are able to choose those that reinforce, rather than challenge, their own assumptions and beliefs.
    
    When knowledge, debate, and truth are no longer respected, learning anything becomes difficult.
    
    

    Conclusion
    As a nation, we're still reeling. I hope we will continue to learn and grow, to respond with the things that make us good and strong, rather than reacting with fear and anger. Like Hadleyburg, our values and virtue have been tested. How will we answer?
    
    Personally, my relationship with work changed. I have a better understanding of appropriate priorities now in both my day-to-day life and in a bigger picture. I am grateful to be alive.
    
    I am also more cynical about and disappointed with our government. It's difficult for me to envision a future in which things get markedly better. The current state of the 2012 campaign does not leave me particularly optimistic.
    
    As bad as I feel about government, my feelings toward the electorate are worse. We cheer governors who execute people, even innocent ones. We focus on trivial issues around our candidates rather than focusing on their ideas and plans. We don't hold our leaders, and by extension, ourselves, accountable for anything.
    
    At these debates, these town halls, these meet-ups, why are we not asking "when will the wars end?" I guess we're all too worried about when we're going to get paid.
    
    I'd like to end on a happy note, somehow. Wouldn't we all? I'm just at a loss. How do you hang a happy face on an ugly event that bred more ugliness?
    
    I still love my country, and I'd rather be here than anywhere else. As I look back over the last 10 years, I wish we all had more to be proud of.
    
    I think of my grandfather. He was at Pearl Harbor on a destroyer when the Japanese attacked. I wonder what he would say about all this.
    
    
  • TIP reunion, part 3: Precocious to Post-cocious

    Sep 07, 11

    It's been over a month since the 30-year TIP reunion. I've had some time to reflect on my experiences and synthesize a bit of what I learned. I've managed to keep a few of the friendships I renewed at the reunion going and keep in touch with some of the people I saw there.
    
    The reunion had a bit of a dark side, as most reunions do. In some sense, reunions are like going back to your childhood home - you are put into the mindset of being a kid again, or in this case, an adolescent. And that's not always pleasant, as there are parts of childhood best left behind. And of course, you're reminded of exactly how far from childhood you are...
    
    One of the things I remember about being a gifted kid was a near-constant sense of inadequacy. No matter how smart or talented or bright or witty I was, there was always someone who exceeded my abilities, while making it look easy.
    
    In a band? Some kids were in a better band. Putting out albums. Got a great score on the PSAT and SAT? Guess what? Only 2nd best, stud - that congressman's daughter scored 50 points higher and got the best score in the school. And so on.
    
    TIP was the same way. I scored decently on the SATs as a 7th grader. But I met more than one kid there who got perfect scores on the SAT as a 7th grader. I was distracted, I goofed off, I didn't always do my best work. Other kids managed to focus and did. Even when I did do my best work, there were kids who just seemed to leave me in the dust. I taught myself geometry in about 2 weeks, passed the standardized test and got credit for it. But I did it while sitting next to kids who, in the same 2 week period, taught themselves algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus.
    
    Part of me wanted to try harder, to excel, to be not just "the best I could be", but "the best", or at least "better than that kid over there". Part of me knew it wasn't going to happen, because of ability or will or both.
    
    Over the years I learned to deal with that longing and frustration. Perhaps I simply got better at justifying why I wasn't the best at everything, or even best at anything.
    
    And yet, there I was, at the reunion, and suddenly it all comes rushing back.
    
    I'm in the hospitality suite. I'm talking to a former classmate. She's got a Ph. D., and a lovely daughter who is not even 8 years old and is already asking her mom questions like "does an electron have mass?" Her life is dialed in.
    
    Another of my former classmates is an economist contributing to a famous economics blog. Another is teaching economics at the Ivy League school where I majored in economics. Nearly everyone at the reunion had an advanced degree. They just seemed so damn smart and accomplished. Maybe I need to go back to school, do something meaningful. I ruminated and compared my own meager achievements to these people and found myself lacking.
    
    But I start talking to them, and it begins to dawn on me: we all feel that way.
    
    A guy who has started 2 successful businesses on his own feels like he needs to get a Ph. D in physics just so he can have one. And some of the people with one Ph. D feel they need to get a second one, because they don't feel like they've done enough. The people in academia wish they were out doing stuff in "the real world" and the people in the working world all think they should be teaching or researching.
    
    When you're identified as having great potential, people tell you outrageous things. They say "you'll rule the world" or "you'll change everything" or "you'll be rich". You don't have to hear that too many times to start buying it when you're a kid. You want to believe it. You want to be the hero of the story, just like in all the books you've read.
    
    But those expectations are unrealistic, if not misleading, for many reasons.
    
    The presentation by the TIP researchers unintentionally referenced and reinforced those unrealistic expectations and dredged up all this stuff for everyone. After talking about gifted kids and how we grew up and what we were like, the researchers showed us photos of some other notable "gifted" people: Sergey Brin. Lady Gaga. A lady who'd won a big-deal physics prize.
    
    I could feel all of the formerly precocious around me wincing in their seats as they thought "how come I'm not up there? Where did I miss my chance? Is it too late? What's wrong with me?" I saw the parade of faces and research as a kind of indictment: "How come you're not running the world yet?"
    
    It was something of a surprise to find I wasn't the only one who felt that way. It was also a relief. And it was sort of funny, too, in how predictably everyone continued to want to (over-)achieve. It was a subject that came up repeatedly over the next day.
    
    Of course there's something to be learned here. If I can look at these other high achievers and say "Hey, look, a second Ph. D? Dude, you really need to recalibrate your expectations"...well, maybe I need to look in the mirror and take some of my own advice.
    
    "Diminished expectations" was a phrase kicked around a lot from age 18-22. That was when I and some of my more cynical classmates began to realize that hard work and raw talent were insufficient to guarantee success.
    
    There were other factors at play that were just as much or more important than aptitude and effort, and often those other factors are the ones that really matter. Things like "who you know" and "how you look" and "being in the right place at the right time".
    
    That was also around the time we began to realize there was also more to life than just work. I think of "Real Genius", a movie that affected my outlook in many ways. There's a scene where the two main characters are discussing a mysterious third person:
    

    Chris: So, I talked to him.
    Mitch: You did?
    Chris: Yeah, and he used to be the number one stud around here in the 70’s. (whispers) Smarter than you and me put together.
    Mitch: So what happened? Did he crack?
    Chris: Yes, Mitch. He cracked, severely.
    Mitch: Why?
    Chris: He loved his work.
    Mitch: Well what’s wrong with that?
    Chris: There’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s all he did. He loved solving problems, he loved coming up with the answers. But, he thought that the answers were the answer for everything. Wrong. All science, no philosophy. So then one day someone tells him that the stuff he’s making was killing people.
    Mitch: So what’s your point? Are you saying I’m going to end up in a steam tunnel?
    Chris: Yeah.
    Mitch: What?
    Chris: You are, if you keep up like this. Mitch, you don’t need to run away from here. When you’re smart people need you. Use your mind creatively.
    Mitch: (smiles) I noticed you don’t study too hard.
    Chris: (smiles) Bingo.

    You shouldn't compare your life, your self, or your achievements to anyone else. They are coming from a different situation, with different priorities. They make different sacrifices and are driven by different demons.
    
    I will never forget the dark circles under the eyes of the girl who scored higher than me on the PSAT. She did very well in high school, but it was obvious she paid a substantial price for that success.
    
    I think of my fellow TIP students, all of us considered precocious at one time, and now clearly "post-cocious". Potential is not a guarantee of anything. Achievements do not bring more than fleeting happiness. Aspire to being happy with who you are, not just what you do.
    
    Use your mind creatively. Don't study too hard.
  • Steve Jobs, Inconsequential Details, and Bass Players

    Aug 29, 11

    In the wake of Steve Jobs' resignation from Apple this past week, hagiographic posts churned and bubbled. One of the most popular was a story by Vic Gundotra, about how Jobs called him to discuss the Google logo on the iPhone, specifically the gradient in the yellow "o". It wasn't right, and he wanted it fixed.
    

    
    

    People have been citing this as an example of how great Jobs was/is, noting his miraculous attention to detail.

    
    I completely disagree. Jobs had many fine moments. This was not one of them.

    
    

    This was a completely inconsequential detail. I doubt most people, seeing the two images side by side, could even tell the difference. And yet this top executive felt the need to spend time with another top executive to discuss and resolve the situation. On a Sunday morning.

    
    

    Jobs has an army of some of the best visual design folks on the planet. They've not only gone to school for precisely this thing, they've executed design in the field. Google's design team isn't as good, but they're no slouches (and they're getting better).

    
    Steve Jobs, on the other hand, is a guy who tucks his turtlenecks into his rather unflattering jeans, and wears running shoes with them (and not cool running shoes, either). His personal clothing aesthetic could perhaps be described as "successful sysadmin who once went shopping with a girlfriend". 

    
    

    So Jobs or professional designers: who's going to make the better design choice?

    
    

    One makes many aesthetic decisions designing products or making art. Most of them are arbitrary, and collectively they create the overall feel of the thing. If you believe the reporting and hype, Apple's products are basically the result of Steve Jobs' personal aesthetic. There's nothing wrong with that.

    
    

    Even if you think Jobs made the better choice and had the right to, imagine how his designers felt. Why are they even there? (And yes, I understand it's entirely possible one of them noted this issue and passed it up to The Steve so he could pass it over to Vic and get approval - you can't just arbitrarily change a logo asset for a company like Google, but I'm assuming the story went down as people are choosing to interpret it).

    
    In the big picture, this detail was inconsequential. CEOs are supposed to stay focused on the big picture, and leave the details to the folks passionate and expert in implementing the details.

    
    

     Far more important were the many other design decisions made - the size of the device, the weight, the screen resolution, how the system looks in general. Jobs (and more importantly, his toiling, faceless legions of workers) should be lauded for their attention to detail and understanding how important some of those things can be. If one has any doubts, go look at an Android phone or a (shudder) BlackBerry and see what lack of attention to detail looks like.

    
    

    When you add someone to your band, you want them to bring their aesthetic and contribute. As I like to say, if I want you to play bass in my band, I want you to play what you think are good bass parts. If I'm standing in front of you constantly saying "no, not that note, play it exactly like this", I'm not looking for a collaborator. I'm looking for a robot (and should have a robot playing the part).
    
    Looking at Jobs' take on this, he's got designers and he's not using them. He either hired the wrong people (they couldn't do the work to the level of satisfaction required) or he didn't empower them (he didn't let them do the work they were hired for). Neither of those speaks well of his decisions!

    
    

    It's important to call out when design overrides are worthwhile or not. Looking back to this post, I'd cite Vic's story not as an example of Jobs' brilliance, but rather an example of how most CXO-level executives focus on the wrong things and take away the wrong lessons from Jobs' leadership.

    
    

    Over the last few days, I expect many designers have received emails from their CEOs critiquing their visual design. Sorry to hear that, guys. Maybe you can call Vic Gundotra and get his advice on what to do.
  • Who Uses Your Tools?

    Aug 20, 11

    Two of the most important records in my life I heard when I was very young. Tomita's "Kosmos" and Jean-Michel Jarre's "Oxygene". They both had extensive lists of the gear used to make the album, which to a young man, seemed mysterious and futuristic.
    
    Tomita's list was huge, and featured things like:
    

    • AKG BX20E Echo Unit
    • Binson Echorec "2"
    • Roland Space Echo RE-201
    • Eventide Clockworks "Instant Phaser"
    • Eventide Clockworks "Instant Flanger"
    • Eventide Clockworks "Harmonizer"
    • Fender "Dimention IV"
    • Fender Electronic Piano
    • Hohner Clavinet C
    • Mellotron
    • Leslie Speaker Model 147
    • Roland Rhythm Arranger TR66

    Jarre's included:
    

    • ARP 2600
    • Eko Computerhythm
    • Eminent 310
    • EMS AKS
    • EMS VCS3
    • Farfisa Organ
    • Mellotron
    • RMI Harmonic Synthesizer

    At the time, these might as well have been spaceship components (hell, Tomita had an actual phaser!) -  incomprehensible and beyond expensive. Over 30 years later, I am familiar enough with gear to know what nearly every single one of the devices on both lists did and sounded like. If I wasn't, the Internet provides endless photos, samples, and emulations.
    
    More importantly, even if I didn't know what exact gear was used, I can now listen to those old records and know how to make those sounds using other gear.
    
    I enjoy learning about the creative process other people use. Studying how others work inspires me to try new methods. I read a lot of blogs and books about how painters paint, musicians write and record, and writers write. I also read a lot about tools.
    
    One of the more commonly-asked questions on these blogs are things like:
    "What synths did [artist name] use?"
    "Which famous artists used [instrument]?"
    
    People ask these questions to help determine what gear to buy, or if the gear they have is any good.
    
    I think using the exact same tools to make the exact same kind of work is a recipe for uninteresting art - you'll inevitably make bad copies of the things you love.
    
    Using the same paints and brushes as Magritte won't make you a good painter, and it won't make your painting better. Using the same typewriter as William Gibson won't make you a better writer. So why should using the same equipment and sounds as [your favorite band] make you a better musician?
    
    A better approach is to try to emulate feel, vibe, or style with radically different gear. Or if you love the gear, use it to make very different music. The differences are what make it interesting.
    
    There's nothing wrong with copying as a form of study - Arshile Gorky famously copied paintings by his colleagues as part of his art self-education. But when you're ready to express yourself, pay less attention to who else uses your tools and more attention to how you're using your tools!
  • Talent, Art, and Fun 2: History

    Aug 16, 11

    A tangent to my follow-up to this article about a woman and her relationship with playing guitar and music...and how everyone reacts to her artistry.

    
    

    A bit of my own personal history, through her words.

    
    

    I wanted to play guitar ever since I could remember. I did have a sense of how great it might feel to perform and sing, but I had no idea how long, convoluted, and confusing the path could be.

    
    

    One of my earliest childhood memories is of my father playing the acoustic guitar. I can honestly only recall him doing it this one time. I was around 3 years old. I'm pretty sure he sang "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen, and "I Think It's Going To Rain Today" by Randy Newman, both of which Judy Collins had covered, and he had some of her records.

    
    

    I just thought it was awesome.

    
    

    Other formative childhood experiences were seeing The Monkees on TV at my grandmother's house in Texas as a young child. Discovering these new things called "synthesizers". Finding out that FM radio was broadcasting rock music for free all the time. And then seeing my first music videos.

    
    

    I started playing instruments in the 4th grade, but that was band/symphony/orchestra. I wanted to play rock music...but how? With whom? There weren't any books that I could find. But one day my parents hooked me up with something called "RockSchool". Books at first, and then a whole TV series on public TV, no less.

    
    

    
    

    On the one hand, they made it look easy. And yet it was still mystifying. It was a start. (In later years, I'd realize the keyboard player they added in season 2 (Alistair) played keyboards on The Chameleons UK's album "Script of the Bridge", a favorite of mine.

    
    

    But all of this was before the Internet, and finding out all this stuff was next to impossible. Learning how to do it required lots of driving to little Mom and Pop music stores in the middle of nowhere.

    
    

    None of my friends had any interest in it, and my parents were not musicians. My Dad never played the guitar again after that time when I was very young.

    
    

    With rock guitar, it helps to be shown a few tricks. 

    
    

    Chris Haines ("Chaines") taught me to play guitar. He was the main guitar player in my college band, a long-time musical collaborator, and for a while, my best friend. He gave me tablature books. He played me records. He showed me the critical importance of alternating up-down picking ("None of that rake bullshit!"). He taught me the open G minus the third on the "A" string ("Mute that 'A' string with your index finger, because the third sounds like shit!"), and how the metal guys all played the open A with one finger and muted the high "e". I still use those faster, cleaner chord versions today. He showed me barre chords. How to tap. How to play harmonics. Really, everything I needed.

    
    

    I took some lessons not long after, just to learn the "unified neck" and get some fancier chords under my fingers.

    
    

    “Your brother is good at music,” the rap went, “while you are good at drawing and and other things.”

    
    

    My brother is good at music. He's always been good, and it's always been a source of pride and envy for me. He's a much better guitar player than I am. I think he's a better pop songwriter. I'm probably a bit weirder, and tend to finish more projects, though. 

    
    

    His band had a record deal, made a record in a real studio. Got on a movie soundtrack. If you caught them on the right night in the late 90's, they were the best band in L.A. I still listen to their records, and much to my brother's chagrin, some of his solo work. 

    
    

    I remember the first time I borrowed Michele Deppler's 4-track recorder to do some early synth noodling. I came home and found my brother had recorded a guitar instrumental called "Ebb Tide". I wish I still had a copy. But I instantly understood he was always going to be "better at this" than I was.

    
    

    I don't think my parents really understood how important music was to me until I went off to college. My brother went to art school. He was the "creative one", I was the "smart one". My brother is brilliant, in fact. And I believe I've demonstrated some creativity. I think my folks figured I'd "grow out of it". Must have been a bit of a surprise when I took my fancy degree and drove out to L.A. to be a rock star. To their credit, they were supportive as long as I was doing what I wanted.

    
    

    I also went to school with a bunch of other kids who were ridiculously talented. They inspired me to start my own band and influenced me for many, many years after school ended.

    
    

    to me rock’n'roll was writing your own songs and playing your own instruments. 

    
    

    My first real band started writing songs at our first practice. We only learned covers to fill out our set. I still think bands that don't use backing tracks are hands-down "better" than those that do. The funny thing is I spent many years in L.A. playing live with sequencers and drum machines, and nobody thought it was OK. But somewhere around 2000, it became totally acceptable. I played with a few bands in San Francisco that used backing tracks and and nobody batted an eye.

    
    

    I gave myself permission to ‘suck’. And with permission to suck comes the ability to rock, and to overcome all the fears and insecurities that had been holding me captive.

    
    Once I left L.A., metaphorically and literally, I started a new creative phase. Personally, I feel I've produced consistently stronger work in the last 6 years than in my entire previous creative career.
    
    If there's one thing that has helped, it's been removing any sense of "pressure" or worrying about "hits" or "success". The best work I've done has come from trusting myself, following my own vision, the weirder, the better.
    
    It's good to remind myself of that every now and then. You should trust your artistic vision and intuition. It's what defines your work as yours!
  • Talent, Art, and Fun 1: Just Play

    Aug 15, 11

    Since I'm writing a lot about being "gifted" lately, it seems fitting to comment on being "talented", another subject dear to me.
    
    If you have ever made art outside of grade school, or if you've ever contemplating making any kind of art as an adult, you should read this article. It's about a woman and her relationship with playing guitar and music...and how everyone reacts to her artistry and efforts.
    
    The gender issues addressed in the writing have captured most of the attention, but I think that's the least interesting thing about the piece. I was struck by her comments on making art independent of notions of "talent" and why you might choose to do it at all.
    
    

    I really didn’t understand the nuances of musical practice, advancement and plateaus, muscle training, etc.,

    
    Learning to play an instrument - any instrument - is difficult. Gaining enough facility and comfort with the instrument to play songs harder still. I'm not even talking virtuosity or finding your own voice, just getting to a point where you can play. And unless you are very lucky, you're probably walking this particular road alone, with either modest encouragement ("sounds like real music!") from your friends and family, or something ranging from bemusement ("you're weird", "I thought that was for kids") or even active discouragement ("you're wasting your time", "you suck").
    
    Getting good at music takes a long, long time. Like anything. There are plenty of people who quickly master emulation of their particular idiom (that kid sounds like an old bluesman! that lady sings jazz that sounds like that other lady that sang jazz!), but in some sense it's just a cargo cult. As I've noted before, moving beyond simple imitation or being a pastiche factory takes time, skill, and guts.
    
    There's always going to be people "better" than you at whatever you do. You can either let that deter you and beat you down, or you can let it inspire you and give you some guidance. Most of the time, I've been able to focus on the latter. Sometimes, people are just so damn good I want to give up!
    
    

    ...only some would ultimately be deemed worthy to publicly perform music: those who were ‘musically talented’. And that talent was determined by one’s ability to imitate, precisely, music written by others.

    
    

    John Philip Sousa called it. Since the invention of the recording machine, the culture of the amateur musician withered and was replaced with "professional executants" and a passive audience.
    

    
    

    The re-democratization of production and distribution of music in the late 20th century began to reverse this trend. But it's still more common for people to say "I am not creative" and "I am not good at music".

    
    

    Being "good" isn't the point. Having fun, or expressing yourself, or working your brain in different ways is the point. (And "good" is one of those ridiculous subjective judgments that falls apart under close examination.).

    
    

    Recording also changed how musicians worked. Musicians could now study their own performances as well as others, playing and replaying. This led to a certain homogenization of sound in addition to the split between "performer" and "audience".

    
    When you start making music, people will give you "complements" such as "Hey, that sounds like a real song!" What they're really saying is "you almost sound exactly like what I hear. Almost."

    
    

    This is nothing new - art is culture, and people make their judgments based on what they know best. Presumably that gap between the familiar and you is a bad thing? It's not.

    
    

    When I listen to the radio, I hear stuff that sounds like music but isn't music. I hear bands that have the superficial characteristics but no depth. The guitars buzz appropriately, the singer's nasal "punk" whine is a perfect distillation of Blink-182's distillation of Green Day's distillation of the Buzzcocks. The songs all go ABABCB and so forth. But there's nothing...exciting about any of it. It's simulated woodgrain veneer on top of particle board. 

    
    

    This is what happens when your primary criteria for merit is "resemblance to what came before": Stagnation. Let you be you.

    
    

    I gave myself permission to ‘suck’. And with permission to suck comes the ability to rock, and to overcome all the fears and insecurities that had been holding me captive.

    
    

    There are plenty of artists who have made "great art" while having either rudimentary skills or only using the very minimum of their substantial skill set.

    
    

    And having objectively great skills is absolutely no guarantee of making good art. There are countless "guitar noodling" records, plenty of classical musicians who play like robots, and lots of technically competent, even excellent, painters who produce bland work.

    
    

    Whether you're looking at Abstract Expressionism or listening to punk rock or electronica, the key is the ideas and passion matter more than execution. Execution is important only in that it not substantially detract from the ideas and passion. 

    
    

    And since much art benefits from limitations, if I have to choose between lack of "talent" and lack of "ideas", here's my "talent". Keep it! You'll always benefit from better technique, however. Never mistake lack of skill for "authenticity". It's just lack of skill!
    

    
    to me rock’n'roll was writing your own songs and playing your own instruments. 

    
    

    Write your own songs. Maybe they'll be terrible, maybe they'll be great, but they'll be yours. And that is magic and priceless.
    

    
    

    You will be clumsy when you first start your art. Try to think of this less as "I am awful" and more as "I am expressing myself". Do it for yourself!
  • TIP reunion, part 2: Closing Remarks

    Aug 05, 11

    The following are my closing remarks presented at the Duke University Talent Identification Program (TIP) 30th Anniversary Reunion on July 24, 2011
    
    In applying for TIP in 1982, I had to write an essay on Montaigne. It seems appropriate to open with one of his quotes:
    

    “Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.”

    When I was a teenager, Dr. Robert Sawyer asked me to join him in Washington D.C. for a presentation to some members of Congress. Even as a kid, I was a passionate advocate for TIP. I am honored to speak today, and grateful for the opportunity.
    
    It is wonderful to see so many people here, many having traveled far to be here. I keenly feel the absence of some very important friends who were here the last time we got together: Ramon Griffin, Bill Bevan, and Greg Kimble.
    
    

    Duke University East Campus

    
    
    Gifted.
    
    My freakish intelligence was recognized literally almost the day I was born. I was tested by scientists doing perception studies on newborns. They kept asking my parents to bring me back in because I was the smartest baby they had seen.
    
    Many children are precious, I was precocious. We were precocious.
    
    Gifted.
    
    Being gifted wasn’t easy, as everyone in this room knows. There were academic, social, and emotional drawbacks, and few resources available to help me or my parents cope. It's easy to forget what that was really like, and how horrible it could be.
    
    I was often lonely, alienated, and unhappy. Teachers tired of my answers, energy, and enthusiasm. Other students treated me with something ranging from contempt to bafflement. Special programs and magnet schools meant I didn't go to school with the kids in my neighborhood, which made me an outcast at home, too.
    
    I preferred the company of adults to kids my age, but the novelty of a kid who could beat them at Boggle and Scrabble wore thin quickly, and most adults aren't that interested in talking to kids (even gifted ones) for more than a few minutes.
    
    My parents did the best they could. A family friend (Dr. Colin Blaydon) suggested my parents enroll me in a new summer program at Duke, the university where he taught mathematics.
    
    I was accepted and took Writing I in the summer of 1982, taught by Mark DeLong.
    
    I had no idea what to expect, but by the end of that first term, I knew what "gifted" truly meant. I worked hard and met students and faculty that were really smart.
    
    I met kids who were obviously far more brilliant than me. I met kids who were more mature, together, and accomplished. And I met kids who were far more messed up, struggling in ways I found hard to believe. I still recall one fellow student who managed to lose his shoes in a tree while trying to retrieve a Frisbee. Others seemed barely capable of normal human interaction.
    
    TIP was the first place I felt a true sense of belonging, of friendship, of welcome. That sense of home has been the heart of my involvement with TIP. That, and the delicious Union food and the wonderful temperate weather.
    
    I don’t remember exactly how I met Dr. Robert Sawyer, but I did meet him that summer. I don’t need to recap all the things he did for TIP, or all the things he accomplished for gifted education.
    
    However, I will tell you why Dr. Sawyer felt there was a need for something like TIP.
    
    He wrote extensively about how terrible most “gifted” education programs and activities were. Sadly, he could simply change the dates on many of his earliest writings on gifted education and they would still be relevant today: the lack of academic rigor, the games masquerading as curricula, the slashed school budgets, the gap between rich and poor students…
    
    Dr. Sawyer believed we could all do better.
    
    He wanted a serious program for gifted kids. Something that would truly challenge and stimulate them. And perhaps he wanted a bigger audience for his square-dance calling.
    
    More importantly, Dr. Sawyer told me he was concerned about gifted children in the more impoverished parts of the country. The phrase he used was “intellectual starvation”. He wanted to provide sustenance for these gifted children. To cultivate their nascent love of learning, so society wouldn't lose the benefits of their brilliance.
    
    I remember being keenly aware of arguments that gifted kids, being already naturally advantaged by their giftedness, did not need any special programs or extra help; and that programs like TIP were just providing benefits to those already privileged. “Elitism”, they said.
    
    Yet we all know how essential TIP was for our intellectual well-being. I can't imagine who I would be without it. I had a gifted and easy life and I struggled. How difficult were things for kids in more extreme situations?
    
    

    The author's TIP residential group, Term II 1985. Several reunion attendees are present, including Stacy Gardiner (front row, far left), Vernon Apperson (front row, 2nd from left, navy shirt), Dean Karlan (front row, center, white jacket), Colin Delany (back row, red shirt) and Elizabeth Sellars (front row, far right). The author is in the front left, wearing the bowtie and gray pants.

    
    In the intervening years, I have seen some first-hand examples.
    
    Boredom corrodes minds. Without opportunity and direction, kids' talents wither and evaporate, or curdle and turn destructive. Usually self-destructive.
    
    I was a good kid. I played by the rules. My life’s turned out OK so far. Looking around the room, I'm guessing most of your lives turned out OK, too.
    
    But I wonder about some of our peers…the kids who taught themselves calculus in a week but were incapable of getting to class without losing their shoes in a tree, who couldn’t interact. I know not all of them had the G/T classes and other advantages I had waiting when they got home.
    
    As its first director, Dr. Sawyer worked hard to insure TIP reached out to minorities and girls, and spent as much money on financial aid as possible. The only thing worse than not having TIP exist at all was having it priced out of reach of those who needed it most.
    
    TIP was expensive even back in those days. I was lucky – I never had to worry. In my time at TIP I met kids from every economic level, from big cities and backwaters, thanks to Dr. Sawyer. Many would never have made it to TIP without financial aid.
    
    I attended TIP for 4 summers and a total of 6 terms in the 80s. I served on the advisory board in the 90s, and I taught in the last decade. I've had more of an opportunity than most students (and perhaps even most faculty) to see behind-the-scenes during my nearly 30 years' association with the program.
    
    TIP has changed quite a bit since we were students. Organizations, like people, must grow and adapt in response to the times and their own needs. Today's TIP is not exactly the same as it was back in 1982. The world is not the same. Nor are we…but our original shapes are still recognizable, even as we've adapted to life, changed, and aged.
    
    

    Dr. Robert Sawyer (right, white t-shirt, light blue pants) addresses former (and future?) TIP participants

    
    TIP is a human institution, and is thus imperfect. Like all of us, it's made some questionable moves over the years. Been in a bad relationship or two. Maybe even said and done a few things it regrets with the hindsight and wisdom that comes with age.
    
    You don't learn if you don't make mistakes and try new things.
    
    TIP has never stopped trying to make a difference for those children at risk of intellectual starvation.
    
    As you leave here, I would encourage you all to reflect on the impact TIP had on your life and consider a few things.
    
    First, maybe give TIP some money.
    
    TIP doesn't talk about this much, but they spend every spare dollar in their budget providing financial aid to students. They would give every kid a free ride if they could make the numbers work.
    
    TIP also faces a number of surprising fundraising challenges due to their affiliation with a major university. They can't approach most companies or "compete" with Duke for funds.
    
    TIP needs us. It needs our help so it can help those in need. Think about it, or better yet, do it.
    
    Next, maybe teach. If I can do it, you can. I guarantee you will learn more than you teach, and you will find it to be a rewarding – if exhausting – endeavor. Teaching will also give you a new appreciation for the TIP staff and what they have to do every year to make the magic happen. And how challenging and satisfying dealing with gifted people like us can be.
    
    Finally, think about your own life. Perhaps it hasn't turned out exactly as you'd hoped, planned, or feared. Or perhaps it has.
    
    I know a lot about being a gifted kid. I still don't know much about being a gifted adult. After all this time, even Lewis Terman’s research doesn’t tell us much. We’re still figuring it out.
    
    So here we are. It’s been quite a weekend. At most reunions, you meet old friends and reminisce about what you did.
    
    Perhaps here you can remember who you were. How you felt. What you wanted to do. What kind of person you wanted to be. What kind of life you hoped to lead. How it felt to be excited about learning, excited about living.
    
    Seeing you all, talking to you, learning about the incredible things you’re doing, and meeting your amazing kids has been a rejuvenating and humbling experience for me.
    
    We were all gifted kids. Now we're gifted adults. Precocious then, post-cocious now.
    
    As Dr. Wai said, “mostly normal, with some exceptional accomplishments”. That’s as fine and fitting a description of us as I can imagine.
    
    Yesterday, Dr. Wai talked to us about the “black box” of TIP: Student goes in to the black box, something happens, better student comes out.
    
    Why? Where’s the magic? Dr. Wai is looking into it. In true TIP fashion, some of you offered your own thoughtful suggestions and insights.
    
    I offer this:
    It can’t be the classes and teachers – we all took different classes with different combinations of teachers.
    It can’t be the years we were there – TIP has continued on year after year, and had the same results.
    It can’t be the campus – as we heard, TIP has spread to many different locations and still has the same results.
    It can’t be the food or the shoelaces or the weather.
    
    I eliminate the variables and I am left with the following inescapable conclusion:
    
    The black box is empty. The only thing in it is…you. You change you.
    
    We call that experience “TIP”.
    
    This weekend and these past many years, we’ve heard over and over again that TIP made you who you were. Changed you.
    
    Well, you just spent a weekend in the black box. You were here on campus. You sat in classes, talked with instructors. You ate the food. Experienced the weather. Wore the shoelaces. Danced the Time Warp. Were told by TIP about all the rules you were supposed to follow. You broke them. Caused the staff to revise them.
    
    Dare to let this brief moment in the black box of TIP change you again.
    
    To remind you not just what you did, but what you can do.
    
    To remind you not just who you were, but who you are.
    
    Gifted.
    
    

    TIP's entire Term II student body and residential staff, 1984.

    
    (Special thanks to Iran Narges, who provided perspective and guidance in shaping my words to best convey my feelings and intent for this very special event.)
  • The Collapse of BlackBerry and When To Be Nervous

    Oct 19, 11

    Yesterday, Research In Motion, a.k.a. RIM, the company that pioneered smartphones with the BlackBerry, announced they are laying off 11% of their workforce.
    
    Several years ago, I read Jared Diamond's totally depressing book "Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed". The title says it all. Diamond offers a rather bleak analysis and looks at a number of societies which collapsed and a few which managed to survive.
    
    One example is Easter Island.
    
    Easter Island used to be covered with trees and forest so dense it was nearly impassable. Humans arrived and set up a society. In a few decades, they leveled the forests, and their society quickly died a gruesome, futile, bloody death. The environment still hasn't recovered from the humans. The only things that remain are the creepy statues.
    
    

    One of the most powerful passages in the book is when Diamond asks "What was going through the mind of the person chopping down the last tree on Easter Island?"

    
    

    Why did the people continue to destroy the very environment they needed to survive? And how and why did they keep going when it was beyond obvious?
    
    Diamond also covers the first Viking settlers in Greenland. They starved to death, resorting to eating their horses (down to the hooves), the meager vegetation in the area, and eventually each other. All this while the native people were literally next to them pulling fish out of the water with their bare hands. See, the Vikings didn't eat seafood. Not part of their culture.
    
    The Easter Islanders and the Vikings had one thing in common. Neither society would change their way of life - their "values", even though it they were not sustainable and obviously not appropriate for the world they inhabited. Quite literally, they chose death over changing how they lived.
    
    I've been working on a BlackBerry application for several months. Previously, I've worked on iOS and Android, and taken a very close look at Windows Phone 7.
    
    I hate working on the BlackBerry platform.
    
    The tools are difficult to configure and painful to use, so much so that even finding them on BlackBerry's site took one whole day, figuring out what I needed to install them took 2 days, and in the end, I've had to resort to using a freeware 3rd-party software.
    
    I've been reading a number of articles about RIM lately, notably http://www.bgr.com/2011/07/13/rims-inside-story-an-exclusive-look-at-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-company-that-made-smartphones-smart/ and http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2010/10/whats-really-wrong-with-blackberry-and.html
    
    They're fascinating reads, and have inspired me to write notes and memos to myself and my fellow employees.
    
    BlackBerry is very much like the Easter Islanders and the Vikings: it chose not to acknowledge the reality it inhabited, doesn't want to change, and it is slowly collapsing as a result. If they survive, it will be as a niche player in an industry they inspired, if not created.
    
    Things to consider:
    Don't be worried when things are rough at your company - you usually know what needs to be done. The problems are often obvious: we need a feature or this piece of technology is broken/out-of-date or our marketing sucks.
    
    The challenge is typically in the execution (more on that in the future).
    
    Be nervous when you're on top. That's when hubris tends to rear its ugly head, and that is when you start making fatal mistakes.
    
    Being on top is seldom something that lasts, but being there seems to blind people to that fact. Look at IBM or Xerox or Microsoft or GM or anyone. Who's next? Google? Apple? Facebook? (I'd say "all of the above").
    
    When you're on top, especially if you're the person who brought your company there, it's hard to be objective. It's difficult politically and culturally to say "we don't know what to do next" or "we can't find any more users".
    
    "We need to revisit our fundamental assumptions" is toughest of all. It's a fancy way of saying "we need to change who we are" or "we need to change our way of life".
    
    Things happen. The world becomes different. Your original assumptions are no longer valid. Changing them is akin to "abandoning your identity" or "principles".
    
    But companies ultimately have no identity or principles save making money. Anything beyond that is the result of what you choose to impose. Having a strong identity or principles will not guarantee you users, sales, or existence. And clinging to them in the face of a changing world all but guarantees you will go extinct.
    
    By values I don't mean things like "honesty" or "making a difference". I mean things like "our products will never have a camera or MP3 player" or "8086 architecture only" or "rotary engines" or "we only do black and white".
    
    When you find yourself wondering why the market can't see how incredible your product is, you have 2 choices:
    

    1. Spend a ton of money in consumer marketing to "educate" them as to why they're "wrong" and your product is awesome
    2. Realize you have built the wrong product. In the vernacular, "Y U NO C U R DOIN IT RONG?"

    Choice 1 is inherently arrogant and fighting against the entire world. Very few companies and products manage to turn this type of perception around. It also costs a lot of money and all your competitors get to ride free on your expenditures. Frequently senior executives prefer to go this route because it is psychologically safer and easier than saying "we are doing it wrong".
    
    After everything falls apart, they can blame bad execution or incompetent minions or lack of cash. These are all ways to deflect thinking about whether or not it was a sound plan in the first place.
    
    Choice 2 is difficult. It requires some amount of risk (which can be mitigated). But I believe it is the best thing to do. Truly successful companies are asking themselves if they're doing it wrong all the time, and frequently have small research projects looking at alternatives to their core products all the time.
    
    Adapt or die. Face reality. It's really that simple.
    
    It's hard to believe RIM is based in a town named "Waterloo". Come ON!
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  • @FakeBobLefsetz if they re-brand it "The Beatmobile" it will all have been worth it. #IamBeatman

    Mar 21, 12 from Twitter for iPhone in reply to FakeBobLefsetz Reply, Retweet, Favorite
  • @rachellandy ;-) ok, ok. Maybe Rhapsody?

    Mar 20, 12 from Twitter for iPhone in reply to rachellandy Reply, Retweet, Favorite
  • @rachellandy ...YET.

    Mar 20, 12 from Twitter for iPhone in reply to rachellandy Reply, Retweet, Favorite
  • @tbquirk "Sad" is not in Andrew WK's vocabulary.

    Mar 20, 12 from Twitter for iPhone in reply to tbquirk Reply, Retweet, Favorite
  • Comprehensive article on why 16-bit/44.1 kHz is all you want or need for playback: http://t.co/jptvQt0M

    Mar 06, 12 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
  • @dhhargis @def_leppard @mogdotcom @Spotify Def Leppard has pulled all their content in preparation for remaster/reissue.

    Feb 23, 12 from web in reply to dhhargis Reply, Retweet, Favorite
  • @mtnspring Y U NO go to Caffe Centro? Or Peet's near WhoFoo?

    Feb 23, 12 from web in reply to mtnspring Reply, Retweet, Favorite
  • @rachellandy RDIO does this best, though you can't yet restrict to JUST your friends (I think).

    Feb 23, 12 from web in reply to rachellandy Reply, Retweet, Favorite
  • To paraphrase PiL/John Lydon, "Jet lag is an energy."

    Feb 19, 12 from TweetDeck Reply, Retweet, Favorite
  • Day 2 working at the old Island records studios...watching PowerPoint slides.

    Feb 15, 12 from Twitter for iPhone Reply, Retweet, Favorite
• Posts

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  • Verse, Chorus, Outro

    Jun 02, 12

    I.
    I get to the studio before everyone else.
    
    The rehearsal space is an unpleasant hole in a not great part of town. Inside, I find our rock cell and undo the multitude of locks on the door.
    
    I step inside and close the door behind me. It's mostly quiet, save some metalhead shredding down the hall. I like this time. It's a brief moment of calm before the storm. I close my eyes and try to relax.
    
    I assess the situation. Guitar player 1 has his gear packed and ready. I disassemble Guitar player 2's rig. Most of the cables go into the rack with the effects unit. I bring his guitar and his backup.
    
    I coil up the cables for my microphone and effects. Pro tip: always bring your own mic. It won't smell too bad, is unlikely to give you a social disease, and you know what it sounds like  and whether or not it works.
    
    I finish as the keyboard player arrives. It's just the two of us.
    
    I am reminded of my first few teenage shows, loading all the band's gear into the back of my car. As we're finishing, the drummer arrives. He loads up his items and heads out. I lock up and head for the venue.
    
    II.
    "Two minutes until Pants time!"
    
    We've been here for 2 hours already, mostly sitting around waiting. There's a lot of waiting in the rock life. We watch the headlining band make typical musician jokes while the sound team fiddles with the PA, snake, and various microphones.
    
    Now we're backstage. This is perhaps the nicest backstage area of any of San Francisco's clubs. There's a couch and some drinks and it's almost cozy.
    
    The band talks nervously. These moments before we start seem to last forever.
    
    The band files out onto the stage and launches into "Baby Space". I hang back in the dressing room, as much to savor this brief moment as to make a grand entrance.
    
    I pull open the stage door, smiling, and leap onto the stage. I wave at the crowd. The venue seems full - it's hard to tell with my sunglasses on. (I do wear my sunglasses at night.)
    
    I grab the mic and pull it from its clip, and stomp the effects box to life.
    
    The next 45 minutes are typically something of a fugue state for me. I know my voice is strong and the notes ring out true and clear. The band sounds great. I move, I dance, I sweat, I talk, I sing, I entertain.
    
    People don't dance. That's not unusual. I hope they are at least having a good time.
    
    ...and then suddenly it's over. No encore when you're opening. Which is fine.
    
    While the adrenaline is still online I hoof as much of our gear off the stage as I can.
    
    I move back into the crowd. I talk to my friends, to my fans, to the club owner. The headliner goes on. They sound great. Very professional.
    
    III.
    I've returned all the gear to the studio with the rest of the band. Pretty sure we didn't leave anything at the club.
    
    I drop Guitar Player off at his house.
    
    The fog is rolling in. I'm tired.
    
    At home, I park the car and listen to the hissing of the air at 1 am. I sit in the dark, a drink in my hand.
    
    Being in a band is hard, hard work sometimes. Leading a band, moreso. Hard to understand unless you've done it.
    
    The wind blows, and the windows rattle.
    
    I don't know how much longer I can or want to do this. But I sure am glad I did it tonight.
  • Next Show: Red Devil Lounge with NOTORIOUS, June 1, 2012!

    May 10, 12

    People, mark your calendars. Start your engines. Get your parachute pants cleaned and ready.

    
    

    Sid Luscious and The Pants will be playing on June 1 at the Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco, California. 

    
    

    We're opening for San Francisco legends NOTORIOUS! 

    
    

    Sid knows them from way back when - they're the ones who gave him his first break on his road back out of obscurity!

    
    

    Red Devil Lounge

    1695 Polk Street

    San Francisco, California

    9:00 pm

    June 1, 2012!

    
    

    Tickets are $12 advance or $15 at the door...but because we love you, you can go HERE and enter the secret code PANTS and get yours for just $10!

    
    

    Bring your hot friend and come on down to dance!

    
    

    
    
  • Guitarage

    Apr 01, 12

    There's few things that scare me more than having one of the Pants tell me they bought a new piece of gear. This recently happened. I was terrified that Dante was going to take up the guzheng in a bid to get out from behind the drum kit.
    
    Instead, Pony said he bought a new guitar. It looks like this:
    

    
    

    Jeebus. I hope he still has the receipt.

    
    
  • New Music, New Musicians

    Mar 30, 12

    Hey fans! All sorts of things afoot right now.
    
    We're still working on our new album, and getting in shape for some upcoming gigs and various court-ordered appearances.
    
    We've also been exploring some new sounds. We almost hired this lady:
    
    
    ...but we couldn't get agreement around per diems working out. Last I heard she was going on tour with Mastodon.
    
    Anyhow, we'll have new music out soon. Stay tuned...
  • Our demographic and gigs

    Dec 23, 11

    One of the downsides to being an aging pop star is that generally, your fans get old, too.
    
    Being me, I take advantage of all the best technologies, stay the hell out of the sun, and eat right. so I still look pretty good.
    
    But then I look out at the audience, and realize these are my people...
    
    Anyhow, this is a good example of what some of our gigs are like:
    
    
    
    
    Make sure you press the "snowflake" button.
    
    PS that's not The Pants in the background. I believe it is Built To Spill or maybe  The Arcade Fire.
  • Behind the Times?

    Nov 11, 11

    I did, in fact, model for this cartoon. Thanks, Drew!
    

    http://www.marriedtothesea.com/archives/2011/Nov/
  • Funny because it's true, part 11

    Nov 07, 11

    Wonderella knows what's what.

    
    
  • The Truth About Music Videos

    Oct 27, 11

    From this great new book "I Want My MTV":
    
    

    STEWART COPELAND, The Police: I grew to understand that videos were mainly about getting our singer's face out there. Because it was so pretty. That's the way it goes. Drummers learn that lesson pretty early in life. Guitarists never quite learn that lesson. Drummers and bass players, we're over it.

    So true, so true.
    
    Anyhow, this book is highly recommended. You'll note a shocking lack of stories about Yours Truly within - the product of the continuing industry omerta about Sid Luscious and The Pants, and what they did to us!
  • Coldplay nails it, creates a perfect pop album

    Oct 25, 11

    Man, this new Coldplay record is great. I wish I'd made it.
    
    This review explains it all!
    
    

    "...tugs the heartstrings like it's dragging a sofa upstairs..."

    
    Read this review and understand what I (and hopefully the rest of The Pants) aspire to every minute of every day!
  • Show TODAY at Thee Parkside, San Francisco

    Aug 13, 11

    Come see us!
    
    
    Saturday, August 13 · 5:30pm - 7:00pm
    
    
    Thee Parkside
    1600 17th Street
    San Francisco, CA
  • All Pop Stars Are Fake

    Jun 25, 11

    It turns out that one of Japan's newest pop stars is a fake.
    
    The lovely and talented Eguchi Aimi of AKB48 does not exist. She's a virtual star, and one cleverly created as a composite of all of her bandmates. This sort of bums me out because I was working on a social media project which was going to have us Tweet virtual dates in real-time while simultaneously working on a special album collab project. But now the secret is out, and the project is off.
    
    Of course she's Japanese. I've written before about Bandroids and Japan's cutting-edge technologies in this area. It would appear the Japanese, like me, realized that robots are too 20th century, and that going computer-generated/virtual makes a lot more sense:
    "no hardware". Hardware is complex, messy, and unreliable. Just like the humans you're trying to replace.
    
    Software, on the other hand, is cheap, malleable, and just gets better and better. The pros have been using software instead of recording machines for 20 years. The last 10 years have seen software versions of instruments swallow hardware instruments like a python devouring a gazelle. Listen to most of the records in the top 10 right now: The vocals are edited, tuned, and overdubbed. The drums aren't real drums, or if they were at some point, they've been edited and snapped into a grid, and all "imperfect" hits replaced with better ones. The synths are software. Any old acoustic instruments you hear are almost certainly samples. If you hear electric guitar or bass, assuming it's "real", it's being run through a software amp simulator and not a hardware amp. And so on.
    
    Before you guys go all country/blues/authentic on me and start complaining there's something wrong with this, remember that all pop stars are fake. All of them.
    
    It was ever thus, but let's start with the current round of meatbag pop tarts (there are of course a few exceptional exeptions). They have fake names, "perform" other people's songs, often by lip-syncing to heavily processed backing tracks sung by other pros, while dancing routines a pro choreographer created or stole from someone else, while dressed in clothes someone else picked out and/or designed for them. You can put in Ke$ha's name here, or Katy Perry, or really any pop singer from the 1950s on.
    
    How is this different than a cartoon? Or look at Gorillaz, who are literally cartoons!
    
    Paula Abdul was sued many years ago. Allegedly she didn't really sing the tracks on her breakthrough album, and failed to give the woman who sang the "guide tracks" credit and cash. I have it on good authority that not only was this true, but that Abdul's people wiped the evidence from the masters during the trial.
    
    None of that makes "Straight Up" any less awesome, or any of the hits under these pop brands any less fun, artistic, or great.
    
    I mean, there's no guy named "Coke". The Keebler Elves aren't real. And Willard Scott aside, there has never been a real Ronald McDonald. Those are artificial entities created to sell product. Just like pop stars. And just as advertising evolves beyond using unreliable, fallible humans to sell their ideals, music is catching up as well.
    
    
    
    Most of your country stars are about as "authentic" as Country Time Lemonade. Shania Twain is Canadian, and her then-husband producer was also responsible for such authentic records as Def Leppard's "Hysteria", The Cars' "Heartbeat City", and much of Bryan Adams' oeuvre. Most country stars sing hits written by the pro songwriter community, which counted the late great Scotsman Stuart Adamson (of new wave geniuses Big Country) and Diane Warren, a Jewish woman from Van Nuys (who wrote mega hits for Leann Rimes and Trisha Yearwood) amongst their ranks.
    
    Sammy Hagar says he's only been to a few great parties in his life and has been mining those memories for lyrics and attitude ever since.
    
    Ziggy Stardust didn't exist. There's no Sergeant Pepper and no Lonely Hearts Club Band. Mick Jagger wasn't a street-fighting man, he was a business student at the London School of Economics. The Beach Boys weren't surfers, they were from the suburbs.
    
    You can go as far back as you want (Shakespeare's female characters were all Dudes Looking Like Ladies), but you get the point.
    
    Look, it's about perfection and selling illusion (and that's all entertainment is - illusion). The audience doesn't want to see human beings up there (no matter what they say), they want Greek gods and embodiments of ideals.
    
    That's what the audience has been conditioned to expect over the years. It started the minute we put someone on a stage, and as technology has evolved, the illusion has evolved, too. The internet is very nearly the apex, since it's nothing but doctored digital data about everything. Everything is permitted, nothing is real.
    
    It's just like the perfectly airbrushed and completely unrealistic models used in every magazine and in every photograph. Eguchi Aimi is airbrushing taken to its logical conclusion - she's all airbrush.
    
    Here's her band in action. Like it or not, here come tha future:
    
    
    Here's the "Making of Eguchi Aimi":
    
    
    Japan, I tip my hat to you. Well played. I can't wait to work with and listen to her children.
    
    I'm just pissed I didn't think of this first. But probably not as pissed as Florian of Kraftwerk!
  • Louis C.K. on being famous and older

    Jun 21, 11

    In this surprisingly good Pitchfork interview, Louis C. K. says:
    

    Pitchfork: Right now seems like a particularly up moment in your career. Is there any security in that? 

    C.K.: Oh, Christ, no. It's still show business and based on people going, "I like that guy," which can evaporate on a global level in an instant. Through all the years of ups and downs, I've picked up a lot of skills and learned ways to take care of myself. I do feel more security now, but it's because the recent downs have not been as bad; when I fall from where I am now, I won't fall as far. I'll be OK.

    
    That is about as succinct an explanation of show biz and success that I can think of. The most well-adjusted show biz folks are the ones who are able to back off a bit and think about "doing what they want" rather than "everyone needs to like me".
    
    Sometimes that means you take a smaller paycheck, sometimes it means a change in your risk level.
    
    The Pants haven't played a lot this year, but we make each show special.
    
    See you soon!
  • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    Jun 14, 11

    If someone had made a picture of me during the years most people are in college, it would have probably looked like this (that's me on the right):

    
    

    Courtesy Jeph Jacques of the sublime Questionable Content
  • Bill Withers: Music Industry Casualty

    Jun 13, 11

    I watched this documentary "Still Bill" over the weekend, all about Bill Withers. Who is Bill Withers, you say?
    
    Bill wrote some of the finest songs ever, including "Ain't No Sunshine", "Use Me", and "Lean On Me". His other big hits include "Grandma's Hands", "Just The Two Of Us", and "Who Is He (And What Is He To You?)". Any one of those gets you into The Master Songwriters' Club for life. Nailing that many gets you a chair with your name on it.
    
    And Bill did all that without knowing, in his words "an F sharp from 9th Street". He also had a hardscrabble upbringing in a coal town in West Virginia. Apparently he stuttered badly until his late 20s.
    
    But when you hear him sing, that voice...that is a timbre that you are just born with. Sid may have a nice voice, but Bill Withers has a beautiful instrument. His phrasing is masterful, instinctual, and just perfect.
    
    His melodic ear is brilliant - his melodies can be melancholy, wistful, and slightly dangerous. His songs are both instantly familiar and yet surprising.
    
    Despite all that, Bill is sort of a forgotten figure in the music business these days, and that's sort of how he wants it. Maybe. He made his last album of new material in 1985, a year after our own debut was recorded.
    
    He says he's been writing this whole time, but not finishing anything. Working in his own studio a little. Scribbling tons of fragments here and there, all the time. But mostly he says he's been goofing off, being a little lazy, enjoying his comforts. Raising his kids.
    
    This happens sometimes. The Muse is fickle, and the fire you have as a young person, desperate to prove yourself, can get stifled, dimmed, or put out by even a modest amount of financial success or emotional validation.
    
    

    Put another way, many of my L.A. friends have all kinds of intimacy issues. They all wanted or needed to be on stage having hundreds of people professing their love because they couldn't find a single person offstage who would do that. And once a few of them found that bliss in their personal lives, their artistic life was done. 

    
    

    That don't mean you gotta suffer to create, though. Success in the biz comes through work. That means you pick up your axe and you write, you get out there in front of people and play. Because that is what you do, what you love, and because you need to pay your entourage. You have people depending on you.

    
    One of my music teachers told me never to get a day job. He said "Don't do it. You'll end up with a good job, and you'll get a nice stereo and a nice house and a nice car and then pretty soon you'll get used to all of it and you won't want to give it up. And then you won't be able to focus on your music anymore."
    
    I've seen that take down some folks too. I guess some people stop being hungry after they eat, you know?
    
    I'm not sure if he just lost the spark. I know Bill really didn't like the biz part of the music business. He liked the singing OK, but the rest of it - the record company guys, the recording, the touring - not so much. He was lucky in that he got big enough that he could pick and choose, and had a good enough head on his shoulders to appreciate what he had.
    
    Sometimes that machine just beats your desire out of you, and sometimes even moreso when you're successful. Once you've had a few Bill Withers-size hits, you don't need to take shit from nobody. You don't feel like making a record, you don't have to. And you sure don't have to listen to people who haven't (and never will) have Bill Withers-size hits tell you what to do and how to do it.
    
    But maybe he just didn't want to cheapen his legacy. He's also a perfectionist about his writing, and says he just hasn't been that inspired. He doesn't want to repeat himself either. This, I can respect.
    
    The downside to being a pro entertainer (as opposed to an artiste) is that you have to ship new product constantly. Many of the pros I know see their fanbase like a crop - they tend to them, water and feed them each year, and then harvest some cash by putting out something new. Doesn't matter whether it's "good" or "interesting" or "creative". It's something for the fans to buy. It's breakfast cereal, not timeless art or frozen architecture or whatever great music is.
    
    I mean, hell, I've written a few good songs and part of me wants to just throw my hand up like George Costanza and leave the room. What if my next song isn't as good as "Lifestyle Magazine Lifestyle"? What if my next 30 aren't? I sure don't want to make a record so bad it makes people think less of my good records.
    
    So comfort, hassle, quality control...maybe some combination of those things is why Bill's shop has been closed for so long.
    
    Bill is over 70 now, but you'd barely know it from watching him and listening to him. Tons of energy, sharp as a razor. I aspire to his level of calm, cool, and self-assuredness. I wanna be like him when I grow up.
    
    In the last few years apparently he's gotten interested in working again. Maybe he's realizing he doesn't have too many days left. Maybe he's bored. Anyhow, I hope he does something he's proud of. I can't wait to hear what he does next!
    
    Bill Withers "Ain't No Sunshine"
    
    
    Bill Withers "Use Me"
    
    
    Also Sasha Frere-Jones wrote a nice article.
  • Martin Rushent, 1948-2011

    Jun 06, 11

    Martin Rushent died over the weekend.
    
    Martin had a knack for taking "outside" music - electronic or punk - and making it not just fit on radio, but making it a smash hit without losing what made it unique.
    
    Rushy engineered for some of the 70s biggest and best acts: T. Rex and Fleetwood Mac are the first ones that come to mind.
    
    You know him best for his groundbreaking work with The Human League: he produced "Dare", their breakthrough album featuring "Don't You Want Me". He also worked with many other important bands of the 80s, including The Stranglers, XTC, and The Go-Gos.
    
    I knew Martin best for the great job he did with Buzzcocks. He produced their legendary and perfect  albums, including the essential "Singles Going Steady", the masterful "Love Bites", and the arty "A Different Kind of Tension". When I first heard these, they were all I listened to for about 3 months.
    
    But the record that really blew me away was Pete Shelley's "Homosapien", which fused electronics to strummy acoustic guitar, rock beats to dance beats, and was able to be poppy like Buzzcocks but sounding unlike anything else.
    
    
    This sound, this idea...that was all Martin. And that was the record that caught the ear of the Human League. Because they knew Pete Shelley couldn't play synth, and Martin couldn't play synth...so what was doing all that? It was a sequencer! And yet it was clearly a pop song and radio-friendly, not like the proto-industrial dirges they'd been writing. And The Human League started wondering what they could do with Martin...
    
    
    
    "Don't You Want Me" was a big deal because it had tons of keyboards and a drum machine (all electronic, in fact), but it wasn't some novelty record. It was electronic music but not cartoony space robot music. It was a perfect pop song like any other that just happened to be synthesizer-based.
    
    What few people did know about Martin was that he suffered crippling depression coinciding with (and possibly caused by) some issues with the bands he produced. In his words:
    

    "I ended up a virtually bankrupt single dad with three kids, and had to sell my home and studio to pay off my bills…I didn't know what clinical depression was, but that's what I had. I could barely make a cup of tea and for a year I drifted like a soul lost."

    This was a man who felt things. He understood the record business thoroughly. I desperately wanted him to produce The Pants' first album, and we were in discussions about having mix a track on our new record when he passed.
    
    For better or for worse, there is a direct line from Martin's work to today's shiny pop music, including enabling technology to take over without anyone caring or batting an eye. Green Day owes their career to him, as do their totally denatured copycats Blink-182, Sum 41, and just about any other bunch of kids with colored, pointy hair and buzzsaw guitars, or a bunch of blinking lights.
    
    I miss him already. I hope wherever he is, they have a kettle on and fresh tape on the reels.
  • Allison Moyet on the curse of the hit

    May 04, 11

    The wise and mighty Allison Moyet said this:
    

    "...hits really can be the bane of your life. People don't see that songs are like a diary of where you were at when you were 22, and then you're 23 and think something different and at 24 something different again. It's like you are forever tied to your hits and that's a fucking pain in the arse, because what is appropriate for you musically then isn't appropriate later on."

    She's totally right. It's also tough trying to top yourself. Think back to when you were in your late teens and early 20s. Think about how perfect you were, how confident, how energetic, how young...hard to best that 20 years later.
    
    Doesn't mean you shouldn't try, or that you can't do something different.
    
    And now, of course, one of her hits!
    
    
  • Simple Songs and Success

    Jun 15, 11

    My friend Anu has been writing a lot these days. Good for him. He even name-dropped me in a post trying to drum up some linkbait or SEO or something. No worries. I don't mind - I do this all the time (Justin Bieber naked with lesbians!)
    
    Anyhow. There was that quote from Beethoven. Know what I think? Beethoven is a dope. Making 'a little extra money' is the whole point! Keep It Simple, Sell!
    
    Anu mentioned "simple songs". Yeah, this is the way to roll. When I sit down to write, I'm thinking about a lot. "Emotion recollected in tranquility", for sure, except that I figure if you amp up the situation you get something even more powerful.
    
    But more than that, I'm thinking about how to write something that will sell. BIG. Short list of things it's gotta include:
    
    

    • "Don't bore us, get to the chorus" Does it hit the chorus in the first 30 seconds? (It used to be 60 seconds, but the iPod generation has lopped that down. Many hits now START with the chorus)
    • "If you want that bling, you gotta make it ring" Does it have a hook that works as a ringtone? That means a simple monophonic melody that a synth can reproduce or that will play back well over a tiny phone speaker
    • You have to have a danceable beat. Every top 10 song ever has.

    
    

    There really is a formula, and there really are manuals. I've read 'em all (and given away some of my best ideas to friends who've written them).

    
    

    There's no percentage in writing complicated songs. You're not Cole Porter, and even if you were, people would rather sing "Night and Day" because it's old and associated with a bunch of other things (and maybe even out of copyright).

    
    

    Writing simple means you have more time for important things, like interviews, promo, touring, and writing hits for other people.  Don't slave over it, kids. Bang out your ideas and move on.

    
    

    James Brown had a "one idea, one song" rule. If he (or more likely, someone in his band) came up with a different idea, that was a different song. End of story. James Brown had a lot of hits. You do the math.

    
    

    When I was a kid in the 80s, I wrote real simple tunes because I didn't know any better. I was just happy to slap any verse against any chorus and call it done.  Then I spent a long time in the wilderness of bridges and vamps and key changes and d-sections and codas and reprises before I came back to the truth: You need a great chorus, and one other part to make people miss the chorus enough to want to hear it again. MAYBE you put in one more bit if you must. 

    
    

    I like Beethoven as much as the next guy, but when I'm listening to the 1812 overture, I'm thinking "why can't we have the cannon part NOW?" (And how come nobody has sampled that yet?)

    
    

    New Pants record is coming. I'm working on it. Gotta finish a few more songs. The trick isn't writing them...the trick is the chopping them down to the leanest meanest, essential bits, so they're all hook and no fat. 

    
    

    See you soon, Pantfans!
  • Bob Geldof: Why Can't It Change?

    Feb 10, 11

    Everybody knows Sid isn't interested in "political" music. Nobody can dance to it and it won't get you laid. Or rich.
    
    Sid has mad respect for Bob Geldof. His old band, The Boomtown Rats, made some great records. He'll probably be remembered more for Live Aid and Band Aid and the antics of his daughter "Peaches", and also for naming his daughter "Peaches".
    
    But he's a righteous dude with a nice sense of humor and the right priorities. His new album is called "How To Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell". I can certainly appreciate that - it's what I do!
    
    Read this interview.
  • Photos from Great American Music Hall

    Dec 17, 10

    Our good friends Rusty & Merin of Soma.FM took some great photos of Sid Luscious and The Pants performing at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on December 1, 2010 as part of the Silicon Valley Rocks Charity event!
    

    
    See the whole set here.
  • Sid Luscious plays Great American Music Hall for Silicon Valley Rocks Charity

    Nov 23, 10

    You know, for kids!
    
    
    First: Go buy tickets. If you tell 'em you're our friend, you get $5 off  by clicking here: http://svrocks2010.eventbrite.com/?discount=sidluscious5off
    
    
    But that shouldn't matter, because it's for a good cause: music education.
    
    
    Second, Silicon Valley Rocks is a benefit for Music in Schools Today:
    http://www.mustcreate.org/
    
    
    They only ask special people to play. Like everything else in the music business, it's all about who you know. Of course, they have a bunch of tech folks playing in these bands. Then they realized that hey, you know, you might want some "experts" on the bill.
    
    
    So our agent gets the call, and we're showing up as ringers for this one. Looking forward to it.
    
    
    We'll also be sporting a new drummer for this gig. Dante's taking a little break, and in his place is the extremely capable Captain Leasure. 
    
    
    We'll be throwing down a short-but-sweet set as a way of saying thanks, and we'll be back with a new album and more shows in 2011.
    
    
    PS new songs posted soon.
  • Sid Luscious Interviewed by Silicon Valley Rocks

    Nov 22, 10

    As part of the run-up to our big show at Great American Music Hall, we've been interviewed by Silicon Valley Rocks!
    
    These modern interviews are much easier than the old-fashioned kind. Back in the 20th century, the press actually sent someone to you - a reporter, and often a photographer. These folks would follow you around for some period of time - sometimes it was just a lunch, but sometimes it was a week or more of being shadowed. Of course eventually you forget you've got someone taking notes about everything you're doing and you slip up. You're human. Next thing you know, your manager is figuring out a way to bribe the press team to keep them quiet about your Doritos "problem" or arranging for a "mugging" where their equipment can be stolen.
    
    Now, you get questions e-mailed ahead of time. You send back draft answers and you knock 'em back and forth until everyone is happy. Maybe less "exciting" for the readers, but here in the music business, we value certainty!
  • Sep 29, 10

    We have some footage from our last show at the Portola Festival:
    
    More coming soon...
  • GIG: Portola Festival, Sunday, September 26, 2010

    Sep 26, 10

    We're playing the fantastic Portola Festival on Sunday, September 26, 2010.
    
    Come see us!
  • The Music Business in One Photo

    Sep 22, 10

    
    A picture is 1,000 words. Image courtesy of Gizmodo.
  • Breaking training with Sid Luscious

    Sep 17, 10

    As you no doubt have heard, Sid Luscious and The Pants have a show coming up. Since I'm no spring chicken, I've had to start training to get back into fighting/singing/performing shape.
    
    When The Pants first got back together, I was shocked at how physically demanding performing had become. I'd finish practice sweating and winded, barely able to make it through our sets (and that was before we added the dance routines). It seemed so much easier when we were 15.
    
    Now I know better, and I prepare physically and mentally. Doing so this time around has brought up all sorts of memories and thoughts for me.
    
    The record business has always thrived on young, thin, good-looking kids to populate magazines, TV, movies, and stages. According to Hollywood, being fat is worse than not being able to sing, play instruments, dance, or write songs. If you're looking to be a star, you are seriously better off working on your abs than on your act.
    
    So of course, I had to stay in shape, then and now.
    
    
    I was born in the 60s, and started training regularly in the early 1980s. Things were different then, back in the 20th Century: The post-Pumping Iron era. Jane Fonda's workout videos. Olivia Newton-John singing "Physical" (a #1 hit). Aerobics were new. Leotards for everyone!
    
    Some of the conventional training wisdom of the day:
    

    • Carbs are good, fat is bad. Eat carbs, avoid all fat!
    • Steroids are perfectly OK
    • Serious bulk for dudes. Lift heavy weights!
    • Otherwise, run your ass off (in every sense) with Jim Fixx. Maybe using HeavyHands or ankle weights.
    • Leg warmers are acceptable for everyone. Headbands, too.
    • Train until it hurts. Then train more.
    • If all that fails, just stop eating (also known as the 1,000 calorie-per-day Scarsdale diet), or try the fake Mayo "egg" diet, or drugs.

    It was, to say the least, a lot of bad ideas. Couple that with a renewed desire to train kids hard - a product of new tennis prodigies like Steffi Graf and Gabriela Sabatini, the 1980 and 1984 Olympics, and movies like "The Karate Kid" and Rockys I, II, and III, Flashdance, Fame, and of course, the wonder that is Perfect and what do you get?
    
    In my case, you get a supposed "ex-drill sergeant" having you drink raw eggs at 6 am on a Sunday before running you around the reservoir in a rubber suit until you either throw up or collapse.
    
    You get to be 16 years old waking up at 5 am sore, running a few miles to the gym so you can do your morning workout, then going to school or the studio until the day is over, then going back to the gym for the evening workout, then trying to do homework before you fell asleep exhausted to start the whole thing over again.
    
    And they try to get you to like it, to be grateful, to have a positive mental attitude. "It's for your own good", right?
    
    Kids are weird, though. They can't really understand how messed up it all is, and they can still take some pride in accomplishments, whether it's winning a trophy, a smile from a demanding parent or coach, or setting a new personal best. At the time, it didn't seem all that unusual, just...difficult.
    
    Kids' bodies just can't take that kind of punishment for long, and things break or wear out. I managed to escape with a permanently broken bone in my foot, some vertebral degradation, a wacky metabolism, and a little demon constantly whispering in my ear about how I look.
    
    Many of my friends fared worse, ending up with temporary or permanent eating disorders (if they were lucky) and temporary or permanent drug problems (if they weren't). Some had wrecked knees at 16. Some had shredded rotator cuffs at 18. Regardless, we all got spat out of the machine with damaged bodies and body images.
    
    Though I have to say we were damn good looking. All of us. I'd kill to look that good today. Plastic surgery, while an option for some, is just not going to cut it for El Sid.
    
    The 90s were a rough time. I was both the thinnest I've ever been and the fattest I've ever been. Bad eating habits all around. A compulsion to exercise and little enjoyment about any of it. My fondest memories are of playing basketball with my friend Ian on weekends. My worst memories are consecutive weeks of hearing the alarm go off at 5 am and rolling out of bed so tired I literally could not see straight until I was halfway to the gym.
    
    Now it's the 21st century. I find myself on the treadmill again, acutely feeling the impact of every step. After all these years of beating up my body, it's finally learned to beat back. I see myself in the mirror, and the little demon whispers in my ear and starts pointing out all the flaws.
    
    Nobody said it would be easy. It never was, and never is. The effort is what separates the pros from the amateurs. But this time around, I'm going to appreciate and enjoy every bit of it - the hard parts and the painful parts as much as the joyous parts.
    
    Older, wiser, still good-looking. What more could you want from your rock stars?
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